This was always an arbitrary definition that never really touched on the actual mechanism - the positive feedback that causes inflation to feed upon itself and increase exponentially when spending is > the capacity of the economy.

>clearly the US never had anything close to hyperinflation even with the oil shocks.

Clearly. Which is why I used the term "inflation spike" and not "hyperinflation".

I'm sure there have probably been some economies that have gotten close to the hyperinflation trigger point without realizing it, though (not America, however).

>For a country to turn a ~0.5% monthy shock into 50% monthly price increase means something else is clearly very wrong with their economy.

It means that their economy was probably spending at close to full capacity already and they were heavily dependent upon oil imports. This exposed them to the supply shock, but still, without the supply shock, the hyperinflation trigger point would probably have been avoided.

"Wrong" is a normative judgement. You wouldn't use it to describe physical phenomena. Why would you use it to describe economic phenomena?