Inflation is when the purchasing power of the money we hold falls so with a given amount of currency we can buy less. Words in one sense are like money. Their value fluctuates and the amount of meaning we can ‘buy’ with them rises or falls. For example, the word “awesome” started life in the 1500s meaning “inspiring awe or dread”. By the 1960s it had a much weaker, colloquial sense of just “very good”. This type of semantic shift is known as broadening. For more information visit Research Editors.