When something is inflationary, it belongs to a time of rising prices, or it helps push those prices up. You meet this word on the news and in economics class more than at the dinner table. An inflationary period is a stretch when everyday things — food, rent, bus fares — keep costing more than they did. An inflationary policy is a government or bank move that tends to make that happen, for example printing a lot of money or keeping interest rates very low for a long time. People also stretch it: a big round of pay rises may be called inflationary if shops then raise prices to cover the extra wages. Though actually, calling one event inflationary is a judgement, not a lab result — newspapers use it when they think the move will feed a general rise in prices, not just one shop’s sticker. The paired opposite is deflationary, when prices are falling. It is a fairly formal adjective; in casual talk people just say prices are going up.