glossolalias

Noun

glossolalia (plural glossolalias)

1. Speaking a language one does not know, or speaking elaborate but apparently meaningless speech, while in a trance-like state (or, supposedly, under the influence of a deity or spirits); speaking in tongues.
   • [Adolf Bernhard Christoph] Hilgenfeld, indeed, is mistaken in explaining the unintelligibility of the γλω̑σσαι, only by the transcendent nature of what they expressed to the merely human consciousness; but he observes with great truth, that that which is common to prophecy and to glossolalia...1869, Franz Delitzsch, translated by Robert Ernest Wallis, A System of Biblical Psychology. … Translated from the German, (Second Edition, Thoroughly Revised and Enlarged,) … (Clark’s Foreign...

   Synonyms:

   gift of tongues, glossolaly, speaking in tongues, speaking with tongues

2. Synonym of xenoglossy (“knowledge of a language one has never learned”).
   • As he indicated in the subtitle of his study, [Olivier] Flournoy regarded [Hélène] Smith's Martian as a kind of "glossolalia." In this category, he also included her "Hindu," "Ultra-Martian," and the other extraterrestrial tongues that she would later speak.2000–2001 winter, Daniel Rosenberg, “Speaking Martian”, in Cabinet: A Quarterly Magazine of Art and Culture, number 1, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Immaterial Incorported, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original...

   Synonyms:

   xenoglossy