Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

διδάσκω

to teach

‘to teach’ is one of 8 main senses fuller range ↓

G1321 Strong's Greek
didáskō Transliteration
/did-as'-ko/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 97 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

At its core, διδασκω (didáskō) means “to teach.” Catalogued under 8 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. It turns up in 91 verses across 17 books, a moderately common footprint. Scripture first uses it in Matthew 4:23. It shares a root with διδακτος, διδασκαλος and διδαχη. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
teach
Modern gloss
to teach
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current Thayer scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G1321 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 →

91
distinct verses
The word appears in 91 distinct verses.
17 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 17 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 4:23
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 4:23.
Revelation 2:20
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 2:20.
#174
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 174 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 91 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 55 · 60%
  • Acts 16 · 18%
  • Pauline Epistles 15 · 16%
  • General Epistles 3 · 3%
  • Revelation 2 · 2%

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 91 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 55 verses · 60%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 31 verses · 34%
  • Pauline corpus 15 verses · 16%
  • Johannine 13 verses · 14%
  • Hebrews 2 verses · 2%
  • Revelation 2 verses · 2%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 1%

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: Teach 21×, Teaching 20×, Taught 16×
  • American Standard Version: Teaching 22×, Teach 20×, Taught 19×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Teach 26×, Teaching 20×, Taught 10×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Teaching 34×, Teach 19×, He was teaching 7×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G1321 across 97 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Teach” 21×
  • “Teaching” 20×
  • “Taught” 16×
  • “He taught” 12×
  • “Teachest” 5×
  • “Shall teach” 3×
  • “Hath taught” 2×
  • “Teacheth” 2×
  • “Ye have been taught” 2×

Plus 14 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G1321 across 96 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Teaching” 22×
  • “Teach” 20×
  • “Taught” 19×
  • “He taught” 9×
  • “Teachest” 5×
  • “Shall teach” 3×
  • “Teacheth” 2×
  • “Ye were taught” 2×

Plus 14 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 G1321 across 97 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Teach” 26×
  • “Teaching” 20×
  • “Taught” 10×
  • “He taught” 6×
  • “Began to teach” 5×
  • “Teaches” 4×
  • “Was teaching” 3×
  • “They teach” 2×
  • “Were teaching” 2×
  • “Will teach” 2×
  • “You teach” 2×

Plus 15 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 G1321 across 102 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Teaching” 34×
  • “Teach” 19×
  • “He was teaching” 7×
  • “Taught” 5×
  • “You teach” 4×
  • “Teaches” 3×
  • “Was teaching” 3×
  • “Were teaching” 3×
  • “Began to teach” 2×
  • “Will teach” 2×
  • “You were taught” 2×

Plus 18 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


8 senses in Thayer's, in lexicon order

The 8 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.

  1. to hold discourse with others in order to instruct them, deliver didactic discourses
  2. to be a teacher
  3. to discharge the office of a teacher, conduct one's self as a teacher
  4. to impart instruction
  5. instill doctrine into one
  6. the thing taught or enjoined
  7. to explain or expound a thing
  8. to teach one something

Word origin

Origin: a prolonged (causative) form of a primary verb dao (to learn)

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 04:15,2

A prolonged (causative) form of a primary verb δάω daō (to learn ); to teach (in the same broad application): - teach.

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 25 distinct written forms G1321 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
διδάσκων didáskōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 4:23 23
ἐδίδασκεν edídasken Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 5:2 14
διδάσκειν didáskein Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive Matthew 11:1 13
διδάσκοντες didáskontes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 15:9 9
διδάσκεις didáskeis Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 22:16 7
διδάξαι didáxai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Acts 11:26 3
διδάσκει didáskei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 Corinthians 11:14 3
ἐδιδάχθητε edidáchthēte Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Ephesians 4:21 3
δίδασκε dídaske Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular 1 Timothy 4:11 2
διδάξει didáxei Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 12:12 2
διδάξῃ didáxē Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 5:19 2
ἐδίδαξεν edídaxen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 11:1 2
ἐδίδασκον edídaskon Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Acts 5:21 2
δίδαξον dídaxon Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Luke 11:1 1
διδάξωσιν didáxōsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Hebrews 8:11 1
διδάσκοντι didáskonti Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Dative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 21:23 1
διδάσκοντος didáskontos Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Masculine Luke 20:1 1
διδάσκω didáskō Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 Corinthians 4:17 1
διδάσκῃ didáskē Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular 1 John 2:27 1
ἐδίδαξέν edídaxén Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular John 8:28 1
ἐδίδαξα edídaxa Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 18:20 1
ἐδίδαξαν edídaxan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 6:30 1
ἐδίδαξας edídaxas Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Luke 13:26 1
ἐδιδάχθην edidáchthēn Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Galatians 1:12 1
ἐδιδάχθησαν edidáchthēsan Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 28:15 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1321, 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.

Derived from this word

Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word διδασκω appears 79 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 77 verses in 16 books.

79
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
77
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
16 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 16 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1321) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 77. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1321) 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.