The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Inflation \In*fla"tion\, n. [L. inflatio: cf. F. inflation.]
   1. The act or process of inflating, or the state of being
      inflated, as with air or gas; distention; expansion;
      enlargement. --Boyle.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. The state of being puffed up, as with pride; conceit;
      vanity. --B. Jonson.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. Persistent expansion or increase in the general level of
      prices, usually caused by overissue of currency, and
      resulting in a reduced value of the currency. It is
      contrasted with deflation, and is when it occurs to a
      very high degree is called hyperinflation. [U.S.]
      [1913 Webster +PJC]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

inflation
    n 1: a general and progressive increase in prices; "in inflation
         everything gets more valuable except money" [syn:
         inflation, rising prices] [ant: deflation,
         disinflation]
    2: (cosmology) a brief exponential expansion of the universe
       (faster than the speed of light) postulated to have occurred
       shortly after the big bang
    3: lack of elegance as a consequence of being pompous and puffed
       up with vanity [syn: ostentation, ostentatiousness,
       pomposity, pompousness, pretentiousness, puffiness,
       splashiness, inflation]
    4: the act of filling something with air [ant: deflation]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

228 Moby Thesaurus words for "inflation":
   Barnumism, access, accession, accretion, accrual, accruement,
   accumulation, addition, advance, affectation, aggrandizement,
   amplification, appreciation, ascent, augmentation, ballooning,
   ballyhoo, bedizenment, big price tag, big talk, bloat, bloatedness,
   bloating, blowing up, boom, boost, bottom price, breaking point,
   broadening, buildup, burlesque, business index, caricature,
   ceiling, ceiling price, command of language, consumer price index,
   convolution, cost-of-living index, crescendo, demand curve,
   development, diastole, dilatation, dilation, distension, dropsy,
   edema, elevation, enhancement, enlargement, exaggerating,
   exaggeration, excess, exorbitance, expansion, expression of ideas,
   extension, extortionate price, extravagance, extreme,
   extreme tension, famine price, fancy price, fashion,
   feeling for words, flashiness, flatulence, flatulency, flatus,
   flood, floor, floor price, form of speech, fulsomeness, gain,
   garishness, gassiness, gaudiness, good price, grace of expression,
   grandiloquence, grandioseness, grandiosity, greatening, growth,
   gush, heightening, high price, high-flown diction, hike,
   hot economy, huckstering, hyperbole, hyperbolism, increase,
   increment, inflatedness, inflationary gap, inflationary pressure,
   inflationary prices, inflationary spiral, inordinacy, intumescence,
   jump, leap, lexiphanicism, literary style, loftiness, luridness,
   luxury price, magnification, magniloquence, manner,
   manner of speaking, mannerism, mere rhetoric, meretriciousness,
   meteorism, mode, mode of expression, mounting, multiplication,
   orotundity, ostentation, ostentatious complexity, overdistension,
   overdrawing, overemphasis, overestimation, overexpansion,
   overextension, overkill, overstatement, overstrain, overstraining,
   overstretching, peculiarity, personal style,
   platitudinous ponderosity, polysyllabic profundity, pomposity,
   pompous prolixity, pompousness, pontificality, pontification,
   pretension, pretentiousness, pretty penny, price ceiling,
   price index, price level, prodigality, productiveness, profuseness,
   proliferation, prose run mad, puff, puffery, puffiness, puffing,
   puffing up, rack rent, raise, rhetoric, rhetoricalness, rise,
   rising prices, scarcity price, self-importance, sensationalism,
   sense of language, sententiousness, showiness, snapping point,
   snowballing, soaring costs, spiraling prices, spread, stiff price,
   stiltedness, strain, straining, stretch, stretching, stuffiness,
   style, stylistic analysis, stylistics, superlative, surge, swell,
   swellage, swelling, swelling utterance, swollen phrase,
   swollenness, tall talk, tension, the grand style, the plain style,
   the sublime, top price, tortuosity, tortuousness, touting,
   travesty, trick, tumefaction, tumescence, tumidity, tumidness,
   turgescence, turgidity, turgidness, tympanism, tympany, up, upping,
   upsurge, upswing, uptrend, upturn, vein, waxing, way, widening,
   windiness