διατρίβω
to wear away
‘to wear away’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Imperfect-tense verb in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Tense
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 3 times (30%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 3 times (30%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (10%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 10 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G1304 appears — 10 distinct verses across 2 books. 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.
John 2 verses
- John 3:22 διέτριβεν impf act ind 3sg After these things, Jesus came with his disciples into the land of Judea. He stayed there with them, and baptized.
- John 11:54 διέτριβεν impf act ind 3sg Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews, but departed from there into the country near the wilderness, to a city called Ephraim. He stayed there with his disciples.
Acts 8 verses
- Acts 12:19 διέτριβεν impf act ind 3sg When Herod had sought for him, and didn't find him, he examined the guards, and commanded that they should be put to death. He went down from Judea to Caesarea, and stayed there.
- Acts 14:3 διέτριψαν aor act ind 3pl Therefore they stayed there a long time, speaking boldly in the Lord, who testified to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.
- Acts 14:28 διέτριβον impf act ind 3pl They stayed there with the disciples for a long time.
- Acts 15:35 διέτριβον impf act ind 3pl But Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also.
- Acts 16:12 διατρίβοντες pres act ptcp nom pl masc and from there to Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, the foremost of the district, a Roman colony. We were staying some days in this city.
- Acts 20:6 διετρίψαμεν aor act ind 1pl We sailed away from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and came to them at Troas in five days, where we stayed seven days.
- Acts 25:6 διατρίψας aor act ptcp nom sg masc When he had stayed among them more than ten days, he went down to Caesarea, and on the next day he sat on the judgment seat, and commanded Paul to be brought.
- Acts 25:14 διέτριβον impf act ind 3pl As he stayed there many days, Festus laid Paul's case before the king, saying, "There is a certain man left a prisoner by Felix;
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.
διατριβω — transliterated diatríbō — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to wear away.” More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Acts. The Greek New Testament uses it across 10 verses — uncommon. Debuting at John 3:22, it then recurs through the corpus. Thayer's distinguishes 3 senses for it. 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 G1304 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,056
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,056 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
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 10 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 8 verses · 80%
- Gospels 2 verses · 20%
- Johannine 2 verses · 20%
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: Continued 2×
- American Standard Version: He tarried 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: We stayed 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: They were staying 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1304 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1304 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1304 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1304 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in Thayer's
The 3 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.
- to rub between, rub hard
- to wear away, consume
- to spend, pass time
Word origin
Derived from δια (diá) (G1223) — through.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G1304 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| διέτριβεν diétriben | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | John 3:22 | 3 |
| διέτριβον diétribon | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Acts 14:28 | 3 |
| διέτριψαν diétripsan | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Acts 14:3 | 1 |
| διατρίβοντες diatríbontes | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Acts 16:12 | 1 |
| διατρίψας diatrípsas | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 25:6 | 1 |
| διετρίψαμεν dietrípsamen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural | Acts 20:6 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1304, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
- διαβαινω diabaínō G1224 to pass through
- διαβαλλω diabállō G1225 to slander
- διαβεβαιοομαι diabebaióomai G1226 to affirm strongly
- διαβλεπω diablépō G1227 to look through
- διαγγελλω diangéllō G1229 to proclaim
- διαγινομαι diagínomai G1230 to continue
- διαγινωσκω diaginṓskō G1231 to ascertain
- διαγογγυζω diagongýzō G1234 to murmur
- διαγρηγορεω diagrēgoréō G1235 to watch through
- διαγω diágō G1236 to lead through
- διαδεχομαι diadéchomai G1237 to receive in succession
- διαδημα diádēma G1238 diadem
- διαδιδωμι diadídōmi G1239 to distribute
- διαζωννυμι diazṓnnymi G1241 to gird around
- διαιρεω diairéō G1244 to divide
- διακαθαριζω diakatharízō G1245 to cleanse thoroughly
- διακατελεγχομαι diakatelénchomai G1246 to confute
- διακουομαι diakoúomai G1251 to hear fully
- διακρινω diakrínō G1252 to distinguish
- διακωλυω diakōlýō G1254 to hinder
- διαλαλεω dialaléō G1255 to converse
- διαλεγομαι dialégomai G1256 to discuss
- διαλειπω dialeípō G1257 to intermit
- διαλλασσω diallássō G1259 to reconcile
+62 more words share this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 88 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word διατριβω appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 3 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Leviticus 14:8 διατρίβω
- Proverbs 23:16 διατρίβω
- Jeremiah 42:7 διατρίβω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1304) 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.
- Leviticus 14:8 διατρίβω "He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and bathe himself in water; and he shall be clean. After that he shall come into the camp, but shall dwell outside his tent seven days.
- Proverbs 23:16 διατρίβω Yes, my heart will rejoice, When your lips speak what is right.
- Jeremiah 42:7 διατρίβω It happened after ten days, that the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1304) 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.
