[Ads-l] Antedating of "Inflation" (Economic Sense)

[Shapiro, Fred]

The OED's first use for "inflation" sense 6 (the economic sense) is dated 1838.  In 2011 the Wall Street Journal noted:

A search of texts scanned by Google Books yields several earlier uses of the term in an economic sense than Mr. Barnard's, and suggests that it may not have originated in the U.S. The earliest occurrence is in a footnote that Englishman Charles Robert Prinsep included in his 1821 translation of French economist Jean-Baptist Say's "Treatise on Political Economy:" "The experience of English commerce has... proved that a casual inflation of the price of domestic, and depression of that of external products, may be the basis of permanent commerce."

Fred Shapiro

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