Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Psychiatry The immediate and involuntary repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others, often a symptom of autism or some types of schizophrenia.
  • noun An infant's repetition of the sounds made by others, a normal occurrence in childhood development.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In pathology, the repetition by the patient in a meaningless way of words and phrases addressed to him. It occurs in certain nervous disorders.
  • noun An agreeable but meaningless arrangement of words in poetry.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun clinical psychology The immediate, involuntary, and repetitive echoing of words or phrases spoken by another.
  • noun An infant's repetitive imitation of vocal sounds spoken by another person, occurring naturally during childhood development.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an infant's repetition of sounds uttered by others
  • noun (psychiatry) mechanical and meaningless repetition of the words of another person (as in schizophrenia)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[echo + Greek laliā, talk (from lalos, talkative).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From echo +‎ -lalia.

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Examples

  • 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.

    onesevennine Diary Entry onesevennine 2009

  • They may echo the last few words of someone else's sentence, a condition known as echolalia, or they may not talk at all.

    Using Drugs to Fight Autism 2009

  • 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.

    CNN Transcript Jul 1, 2008 2008

  • 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.

    Intersomnolence Wendy Wimmer 2011

  • 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.

    Intersomnolence Wendy Wimmer 2011

  • See also breast feeding; diet; food; formula feeding echolalia, 77

    You Raising Your Child Michael F. Roizen 2010

  • Critter can learn to hold a pencil, but you don't care if he can talk in something other than echolalia or second-person?

    Autism Thoughts jjschwabach 2010

  • See also breast feeding; diet; food; formula feeding echolalia, 77

    You Raising Your Child Michael F. Roizen 2010

  • His voice is R. Kelly on a hit of helium or Prince stricken with echolalia, the compulsion to repeat words.

    Album review of 'Love King' by The-Dream 2010

  • His voice is R. Kelly on a hit of helium or Prince stricken with echolalia, the compulsion to repeat words.

    Album review: The-Dream, "Love King" 2010

Comments

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  • also:

    The immediate and involuntary repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others.

    December 31, 2007

  • JM is somewhat inchoate in his adoption of echolalia and needs to speak after more people about it.

    March 29, 2011

  • Cf. echopraxia.

    June 14, 2011