Glossolalia: 'Speaking in Tongues' and Its Greek Root
{{Glossolalia}}, popularly called 'speaking in tongues', is the practice of uttering speech-like sounds that believers often take to be a language unknown to the speaker. The word is built from Greek 'glossa' (tongue, language) and 'laleo' (to speak), making it a relative of {{gloss}} and {{glossary}}.
Glossolalia is a phenomenon in which a person utters words or speech-like sounds, frequently understood by believers as a language unknown to the speaker. In English it is commonly called 'speaking in tongues' and is associated especially with Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, though related practices appear in other religious settings. The term is a direct relative of the scholarly sense of gloss. It combines Ancient Greek glossa (tongue, language) with 'laleo' (to speak, talk), so it means literally 'tongue-speech'. The same 'glossa' root, meaning 'tongue', produces the whole family that includes gloss (an explanatory note), glossary (a collection of such notes), 'polyglot' (many-tongued), and 'epiglottis' (the flap upon the tongue). See Etymology of 'Gloss' and 'Glossary': From Greek 'Glossa' (Tongue) for the full word family. A distinction is sometimes drawn between glossolalia and xenoglossy, the alleged speaking of a real natural language the speaker has never learned.