διάλεκτος
conversation
also: speech, discourse, language fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where G1258 appears — 6 distinct verses across 1 book. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Greek form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Greek New Testament; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences of this word are not indexed here.
Acts 6 verses
- Acts 1:19 διαλέκτῳ n dat sg fem It became known to everyone who lived in Jerusalem that in their language that field was called 'Akeldama,' that is, 'The field of blood.'
- Acts 2:6 διαλέκτῳ n dat sg fem When this sound was heard, the multitude came together, and were bewildered, because everyone heard them speaking in his own language.
- Acts 2:8 διαλέκτῳ n dat sg fem How do we hear, everyone in our own native language?
- Acts 21:40 διαλέκτῳ n dat sg fem When he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the stairs, beckoned with his hand to the people. When there was a great silence, he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, saying,
- Acts 22:2 διαλέκτῳ n dat sg fem When they heard that he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, they were even more quiet. He said,
- Acts 26:14 διαλέκτῳ n dat sg fem When we had all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.'
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
διαλεκτος — transliterated diálektos — is a Greek noun carrying the sense “conversation.” Its uses cluster heavily in Acts (100% of all occurrences). With 6 verses in 1 book, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Thayer's distinguishes 2 senses; alongside “conversation” it spans “speech”, “discourse”, and “language”. The King James Version usually renders it “tongue,” while modern versions prefer “language” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1258 catalogs a Greek word from the Greek New Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Greek New Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,476
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,476 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 6 verses 100%
By section of the New Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Some books belong to more than one corpus (Luke is in both the Gospels and the Lukan corpus, and so on), so these shares overlap and need not total 100%. Each figure is a share of the word’s 6 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 6 verses · 100%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Tongue 5×
- American Standard Version: Language 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Language 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Language 6×, In 3×, The 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1258 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1258 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1258 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 3 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1258 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 2 senses Thayer's distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- conversation, speech, discourse, language
- the tongue or language peculiar to any people
Word origin
Derived from διαλεγομαι (dialégomai) (G1256) — to discuss.
From G1256 ; a (mode of) discourse that is dialect : - language tongue.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word διαλεκτος appears 2 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 2 verses in 2 books.
- 2
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 2
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Esther 9:26 διάλεκτος
- Daniel 1:4 διάλεκτος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1258) appears in the Greek Septuagint. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Esther 9:26 διάλεκτος Therefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur. Therefore because of all the words of this letter, and of that which they had seen concerning this matter, and that which had come to them,
- Daniel 1:4 διάλεκτος youths in whom was no blemish, but well-favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and endowed with knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability to stand in the king's palace; and that he should teach them the learning and the language of the Chaldeans.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1258) in the Septuagint — not a translation of any one Hebrew word. The store carries no word-level Hebrew↔Greek alignment, so no Hebrew original is asserted here. Counts come from the recovered LXX Strong's tagging — high-frequency vocabulary is well covered, while rare or late forms may be untagged — so they reflect tagged occurrences and may slightly undercount.
