Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Psychiatry The immediate and involuntary repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others, often a symptom of autism or some types of schizophrenia.
- n. An infant's repetition of the sounds made by others, a normal occurrence in childhood development.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In pathology, the repetition by the patient in a meaningless way of words and phrases addressed to him. It occurs in certain nervous disorders.
- n. An agreeable but meaning-loss arrangement of words in poetry.
Wiktionary
- n. clinical psychology The immediate, involuntary, and repetitive echoing of words or phrases spoken by another.
- n. An infant's repetitive imitation of vocal sounds spoken by another person, occurring naturally during childhood development.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an infant's repetition of sounds uttered by others
- n. (psychiatry) mechanical and meaningless repetition of the words of another person (as in schizophrenia)
Etymologies
- From echo + -lalia. (Wiktionary)
- echo + Greek laliā, talk (from lalos, talkative). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“They may echo the last few words of someone else's sentence, a condition known as echolalia, or they may not talk at all.”
“She has something called echolalia, and all the research I've done takes it back to autism, as in, if your child has this, they have autism.”
“And, you know, a lot of people have been concerned about video-based training for kids with autism because of the concern that they will fall into a pattern of -- it ` s called echolalia, and that is the repeating that you ` re talking about.”
“One theory of sleep is that dreams are just a nighttime hallucination that the brain simply strings together into a meaningful narrative, which means that all of the sleep talking Liz is hearing on the video playback is just a series of words, echolalia from the day tossed together with her own mind making connections.”
“His voice is R. Kelly on a hit of helium or Prince stricken with echolalia, the compulsion to repeat words.”
The Washington Post: Album review of 'Love King' by The-Dream
“Critter can learn to hold a pencil, but you don't care if he can talk in something other than echolalia or second-person?”
“See also breast feeding; diet; food; formula feeding echolalia, 77”
“All I do is feebly hack away at trying -- emphasis on trying -- to capture some version of "reality" that will speak for itself, including the echolalia of the very media influence that filters it by the act of recording it.”
“One of those perplexed silences ensued, of the sort created by someone in a chatty group suddenly lapsing into echolalia or the gabble of a foreign language.”
“First, there was echolalia -- she'd repeat and repeat any words you said to her.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘echolalia’.
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phrontistery - e
from phrontistery.info
ecclesiarchy, ecclesiastry, ecdemomania, echinuliform, echoism, echolalia, echopraxia, eclaircise, ?claircissement, eclat, ?clat, eclegme and 616 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Words About Words
code-switching, amphiboly, hermeneutics, echolalia, boustrophedon, logorrhea, trope, harangue, shibboleth, rhotic, susurrous, metonymy and 6 more...
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Words about Words
backronym, contranym, haplology, enallage, paronomasia, scripturient, ambigram, idioglossia, dysphemism, tmesis, panvocalic, caconym and 10 more...
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Jargon
parametric, heteroscedasticity, coleopteran, oogenesis, oology, frass, semiochemical, numismatics, ctenophora, synthetase, synthase, enzyme and 12 more...
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Metawords
Talking about talking, writing about writing, etc.
epizeuxis, tautological, aptote, bibliophagist, parataxis, scriptorium, aposiopesis, variorum, chantefable, boustrophedon, psellism, adoxography and 51 more...
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Specificity
Words that have with subtly different meanings from other words.
vestibule, commoditize, commodify, monetize, corroborate, mezzanine, apposite, irony, calefacient, maxim, pandiculate, rarefaction and 40 more...
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josholalia's list
ineluctable, glossolalia, agog, echolalia, minaret, pillory, usury, gimlet, carioca, sniveling, concave, convex and 15 more...
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You Don't Say
Language disorders, disabilities, and unusual demonstrations.
aphasia, aphonia, dysarthria, glossolalia, paraphasia, alexia, polymicrogyria, logorrhea, stutter, spoonerism, agraphia, malapropism and 54 more...
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intueri's Words
inveigle, dolorous, archly, feckless, resplendent, concatenation, peripatetic, delightful, cookie, fey, ephemeral, effervescent and 347 more...
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Lillyjames's Words
uncategorized words that I enjoy
replete, unabashed, dauntless, ubiquitous, fanged, blush, flush, murmur, mercurial, dishevelled, decrepit, raven and 146 more...
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five syllables
ontogenesis, phylogenesis, concatenation, androgenesis, extra textual, inexorably, spagyrically, apophenia, iatrochemist, monocotyloid, morphological, parthenogenic and 941 more...
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Necessary?
"Words are very..."
The above was the original description for this list. Unfortunately, it doesn't convey much about the list contents.
I'm leaving you to draw your own conclusions abo...supererogation, fruitcake, unbeknownst, melifluous, bane, cavy, unnecessary, lyrical, question, undertow, weapon, arduous and 200 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Namesakes
Words derived from names, be they historical, literary, or mythological.
quixotic, cereal, odyssey, jovial, mercurial, erotic, achilles' heel, confucianism, lovecraftian, narcissism, echo, fallopian and 101 more...
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sick
"Sick" is probably not the right word, but this is where I put diseases, problems and abnormalities until I find a better way to sort them.
atavism, pareidolia, apophenia, echolalia, glossolalia, alogia, dysthymia, euthymia, synesthesia, Stendhal syndrome, cryptomnesia, analgesia and 356 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for echolalia.

hernesheir Cf. echopraxia. Jun 14, 2011
jmjarmstrong JM is somewhat inchoate in his adoption of echolalia and needs to speak after more people about it. Mar 28, 2011
xstala also:
The immediate and involuntary repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others. Dec 31, 2007