ἐλαττόω
to diminish
‘to diminish’ 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 Aorist-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
- 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).
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
1 distinct verse where G1642 appears in the Aorist tense, across 1 book. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Hebrews 1 verse
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.
ελαττοω (elattóō) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to diminish.” A scarce word — 3 verses in all of the Greek New Testament. It clusters heavily in Hebrews, which alone accounts for 67% of its uses. Debuting at John 3:30, it then recurs through the corpus. Its lexical range runs to 3 senses. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1642 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,203
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,203 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 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 3 distinct verses.
- Hebrews 2 verses · 67%
- Gospels 1 verse · 33%
- Johannine 1 verse · 33%
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: Lower 2×
- American Standard Version: Little acts lower 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Decrease 1×, Was made a little lower 1×, You made him a little lower 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Lower 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1642 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 G1642 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 G1642 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1642 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 make less or inferior: in dignity
- to be made less or inferior: in dignity
- to decrease in authority or popularity
Word origin
Derived from ελασσων (elássōn) (G1640) — less.
From G1640 ; to lessen (in rank or influence): - decrease make lower.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G1642 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἐλαττοῦσθαι elattoûsthai | Verb, Present, Passive, Infinitive | John 3:30 | 1 |
| ἠλάττωσας ēláttōsas | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular | Hebrews 2:7 | 1 |
| ἠλαττωμένον ēlattōménon | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Hebrews 2:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1642, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ελαττοω appears 8 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 8 verses in 7 books.
- 8
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 8
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Numbers 26:54 ἐλαττόω
- 1 Samuel 21:16 ἐλαττόω
- 2 Samuel 3:29 ἐλαττόω
- Psalms 8:6 ἐλαττόω
- Jeremiah 37:19 ἐλαττόω
- Ezekiel 24:10 ἐλαττόω
- Daniel 6:13 ἐλαττόω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1642) 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.
- Numbers 26:54 ἐλαττόω To the more you shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer you shall give the less inheritance: to everyone according to those who were numbered of him shall his inheritance be given.
- Numbers 33:54 ἐλαττόω You shall inherit the land by lot according to your families; to the more you shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer you shall give the less inheritance: wherever the lot falls to any man, that shall be his; according to the tribes of your fathers shall you inherit.
- 1 Samuel 21:16 ἐλαττόω
- 2 Samuel 3:29 ἐλαττόω let it fall on the head of Joab, and on all his father's house; and let there not fail from the house of Joab one who has an issue, or who is a leper, or who leans on a staff, or who falls by the sword, or who lacks bread.
- Psalms 8:6 ἐλαττόω You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet:
- Jeremiah 37:19 ἐλαττόω Where now are your prophets who prophesied to you, saying, The king of Babylon shall not come against you, nor against this land?
- Ezekiel 24:10 ἐλαττόω Heap on the wood, make the fire hot, boil well the flesh, and make thick the broth, and let the bones be burned.
- Daniel 6:13 ἐλαττόω Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel, who is of the children of the captivity of Judah, doesn't regard you, O king, nor the interdict that you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1642) 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.
