The Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation-related adjective used to be transitory, as in: Inflation is transitory and price increases should be temporary.

That is no longer the case. Inflation rates have been increasing sharply since August 2021 and have been out of the normal 2%-to-4% range for a full year. The Consumer Price Index rose 8.5% for the year ending in March, a rate that hadn’t been seen since December of 1981. So the central bank has broken up with “transitory” and set its eyes on a new inflation-modifying term: entrenched.

“It’s our job to make sure that inflation of that unpleasant high nature doesn’t get entrenched in the economy,” said Fed Chair Jerome Powell last Wednesday, just after he announced a half-point interest rate hike to combat inflation. It’s unclear what exactly entrenched inflation looks like or how we’ll know if we’ve reached it. The Fed has given very little guidance in general on how long they predict it will take for their interest hikes to lower inflation. “It’s a very difficult environment to try to give forward guidance 60, 90 days in advance,” said Powell last week. “There are just so many things that can happen in the economy and around the world.”