What is the meaning of the word "inriation"?

Solution 1:

inflation with pride of prosperity

It is most likely an OCR error concerning an exotic fl ligature being interpreted as ri -> inflation.

This maybe due to poor inking of the top left quadrant of the ligature in the original, or poor thesholding during the OCR. In either case this would lose the upper branch of the f, but the dot being the f terminal serif would remain.

Reasoning:

  • pride is something which is often said to be pumped up or otherwise swolen or aerated.
  • I studied the OCR errors of noisy, hot-Lead typeset documents as part of my Computer Science doctorate.