inflated, ppl. a.
(ɪnˈfleɪtɪd)
[f. prec. + -ed1.]
1. Puffed out or swollen by air or gas; in quot. 1700, ‘filled with wind’.
| 1681 tr. Willis' Rem. Med. Wks. Vocab., Inflated, blown or puffed up as a bladder with wind. 1700 Dryden Fables, Cock & Fox 750 They chas'd the murderous Fox, With brazen trumpets, and inflated box. 1841 J. W. Orderson Creol. xiii. 137 Up rose with inflated majesty the gaseous globe. 1853 Sir H. Douglas Milit. Bridges (ed. 3) 223 Bridges on..air-tight cases, and inflated skins. |
2. Of language: Full of empty rhetoric; turgid, bombastic.
| 1652 Cogan tr. Scudery's Ibrahim Pref. A v b, A narrative stile ought not to be too much inflated, no more than that of ordinary conversations. 1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. (1862) I. vii. 34 The account he gives of it is long and inflated. 1788 F. Burney Diary 2 Aug., I did not in general like Akenside's odes..I thought they were too inflated. 1867 Freeman Norm. Conq. I. iii. 145 Are these titles..mere pieces of inflated rhetoric? |
3. Swollen, expanded, or dilated with hollow interior, as if by inflation.
| 1726–46 Thomson Winter 166 Now th' inflated wave Straining they scale. 1776–96 Withering Brit. Plants (ed. 3) III. 134 Calyx egg-shaped, inflated. 1828 Stark Elem. Nat. Hist. II. 384 Abdomen inflated and vesicular. 1880 Gray Struct. Bot. (ed. 6) 416/2 Inflated, bladdery. |
4. Puffed up or elated with vanity, or false notions.
| 1784 Cowper Task v. 268 Inflated and astrut with self-conceit, He gulps the windy diet. 1790 C. M. Graham Lett. Educ. 69 Knight errantry was the effect of an inflated imagination. 1818 Jas. Mill Brit. India II. iv. vi. 228 The inflated conceptions diffused among their countrymen of the riches of India. 1868 Gladstone Juv. Mundi ii. (1869) 63 In his [Thersites'] short speech, of which an inflated presumption is the principal mark. |
5. Raised or enhanced in price by speculation or other artificial and temporary causes.
| 1881 Gladstone Sp. Leeds 7 Oct., Exported at an inflated state of prices that could not possibly be maintained. 1899 Morning Herald 28 June 4/3 There was an unnatural and an unhealthy inflated value put upon land. |
Hence inˈflatedness, the quality of being inflated.
| 1867 C. J. Smith Syn. & Antonyms s.v. Altiloquence, Turgidity, Inflatedness. 1890 Spectator 29 Mar., Illimitable obtuseness to the bathos of moral and intellectual inflatedness. |