Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Echolalia
/ˌɛkoʊˈleɪliə/noun
The automatic repetition of words or phrases spoken by someone else.
The Greek roots
ἠχώ
ēkhṓ
echo, sound
λαλιά
laliá
talk, chatter
Literally: “echo-talk”
The story of the word
Named by nineteenth-century French alienists, and long treated purely as a symptom. Current thinking is kinder: in autistic speech, repeated phrases often carry meaning taken whole from where they were first heard, a strategy rather than a fault. The nymph Echo behind the word was cursed to repeat only the last words spoken to her.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
echoechopraxiaglossolaliaechocardiogram
In a sentence
The toddler's echolalia faded as his own sentences arrived.
Delayed echolalia can quote a film line months after hearing it.