Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Filled or expanded by or as if by gas or air.
  • adjective Unduly enlarged or aggrandized; swollen.
  • adjective Full of empty or pretentious language; bombastic.
  • adjective Raised or expanded to abnormal levels.
  • adjective Hollow and enlarged.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Swollen or puffed out by air or gas; hence, in zoology and botany, distended or dilated in every direction, and hollowed out, as if by inflation: as, inflated petioles; inflated bladderwort: applied in conchology to rotund shells of light, thin texture, in contradistinction from ventricose.
  • Turgid; bombastic; pompous: as, inflated oratory.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Filled, as with air or gas; blown up; distended.
  • adjective Turgid; swelling; puffed up; bombastic; pompous.
  • adjective (Bot.) Hollow and distended, as a perianth, corolla, nectary, or pericarp.
  • adjective Distended or enlarged fictitiously or without due cause

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Filled with air or fluid
  • adjective Expanded; in a state of inflation, of abnormally increased size, amount, etc.
  • adjective economics : In a state of higher cost.
  • adjective figuratively Pompous; arrogant (of a person or ego)
  • adjective figuratively Containing excessive, meaningless words, particularly for show
  • adjective Higher that the true figure
  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of inflate.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective enlarged beyond truth or reasonableness
  • adjective pretentious (especially with regard to language or ideals)

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Wednesday's meeting followed government criticism on Heath, with Manuel questioning what he described as inflated successes claimed by the unit.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1999

  • Earlier this month, former students at New York Law School and Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich., filed a class action lawsuit over what they called inflated employment rates.

    KansasCity.com: Front Page 2011

  • Earlier this month, former students at New York Law School and Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich., filed a class action lawsuit over what they called inflated employment rates.

    KansasCity.com: Front Page 2011

  • Earlier this month, former students at New York Law School and Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich., filed a class action lawsuit over what they called inflated employment rates.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2011

  • Earlier this month, former students at New York Law School and Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich., filed a class action lawsuit over what they called inflated employment rates.

    KansasCity.com: Front Page 2011

  • Earlier this month, former students at New York Law School and Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich., filed a class action lawsuit over what they called inflated employment rates.

    KansasCity.com: Front Page 2011

  • "We find people have what we call 'inflated worth of self'."

    NEWS.com.au | Top Stories 2012

  • But Roger Salazar, a political consultant who has been directing the effort to defeat the proposal, said that Mr. Holder's statement should reinforce deep concerns about the initiative, including the way it was drafted and what he called inflated claims by its backers of what legalization might do.

    NYT > Home Page By ADAM NAGOURNEY 2010

  • Arnold Kling uses this explain inflated university tuition.

    Compulsory Cultural Exchange?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • We are only staying so that political egos here can remain inflated, at the cost of American and middle eastern lives.

    Obama rejecting Afghanistan criticism 2009

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