glossolalia

noun

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.

   “But glossolalia by definition makes no such sense, because it consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.”

   “Lorenzo is still kneeling at the box, once more Luisa wipes her eyes, Violeta is sobbing and rocking, her glossolalia now at the -sə-sə-sə-level of near exhaustion.”

   “Everything was a labyrinthine amalgam of languages, a towering Babel of puns and glossolalia.”

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.”