Inflation is not a change in prices. Inflation is and only is an increase in the money supply, usually M1 is the best indicator, although certainly not the only one. Prices are only an indicator of inflation and not always a good one.
Housing prices are down from 10 years ago, but we don’t have deflation. Actually the stock market is a pretty good indicator of inflation. It is by no means fail safe but secondary indicators never are. Like other prices the stock market is just one of the indicators. Inflation can be measured, you can compare the amount of money in M1 with previous years and determine exactly what it is. The only reason the government has a shopping cart and changes what is in it is because they don’t want you to know what the inflation rate is. They think that everybody is dumb enough to take their word for what it is when they do their comparison shopping. Anybody who has had to purchase gas, insurance, health care, or education knows that there is a tremendous amount of inflation in those items but this administration took those things out of the basket.
Believe me, the only think inflation is, is an increase in the money supply. Prices are affected by an increase in the money supply only when people SPEND the money. In scary times like now people have a tendency to hold on to their money for security, except for people on the dole. When people hold their money there is little pressure on prices. If the government decided to suddenly change the money to another form and limited how much you could convert prices would go sky high because people who had more than the max would try to spend it before the deadline and the prices would shoot through the roof.
Ah, ok. Folks I've heard from it seems (from here) have been using this one:
in·fla·tion inˈflāSHən/
nounEconomicsa general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money."policies aimed at controlling inflation"
--but I like good ol' usually unreliable wikipedia said:
The term "inflation" originally referred to increases in the amount of money in circulation, and some economists still use the word in this way. However, most economists today use the term "inflation" to refer to a rise in the price level. An increase in the money supply may be called monetary inflation, to distinguish it from rising prices, which may also for clarity be called 'price inflation'.[31] Economists generally agree that in the long run, inflation is caused by increases in the money supply.[32]
--so we're seeing together that what we got is monetary inflation but not price inflation, probably like you said "people hold their money there is little pressure on prices".