speaking in tongues

American

noun

a form of glossolalia in which a person experiencing religious ecstasy utters incomprehensible sounds that the speaker believes are a language spoken through them by a deity.

speaking in tongues British

noun

another term for gift of tongues

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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speaking in tongues

I’d been baptized and raised in a mainstream Kentucky Protestant church, but my father had shared childhood stories of snake handling and speaking in tongues in his Pentecostal Appalachian congregation.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026

Smitten by him and enraptured by the practice of speaking in tongues, which was thought to be channeling the divine, Aimee married him in 1908.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2025

Stanton delivered regular sermons to community residents, which included exorcisms and speaking in tongues.

From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2024

Neo-Charismatic Pentecostals, or Neo-Pentecostals, put an emphasis very much on the gifts of the Spirit: speaking in tongues, miracles, prophecy, things like that.

From Slate ● Jan. 6, 2024

He closed his eyes and folded his hands together on his stomach and started mumbling under his breath like he was speaking in tongues.

From "We Were Here" by Matt De La Peña

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023