 The exact phrase "speaking in tongues" has been used at least since the translation of the New Testament into Middle English in the Wycliffe Bible in the 14th century.Frederic Farrar first used the word "glossolalia" in 1879.In 1972, William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, published a thorough assessment of Pentecostal glossolalia that became a classic work on its linguistic characteristics.