ἐλάχιστος
least
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Genitive-case word in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
Case
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Degree
- Superlative
- Expresses the greatest degree (“greatest,” “most”).
Grammatical forms
- Adjective, Dative, Singular, Neuter, Superlative 3 times (23%)
- Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Neuter, Superlative 2 times (15%)
- Adjective, Genitive, Plural, Masculine, Superlative 2 times (15%)
- Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine, Superlative 2 times (15%)
- Adjective, Genitive, Plural, Feminine, Superlative 1 time (8%)
- Adjective, Genitive, Plural, Neuter, Superlative 1 time (8%)
- Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Neuter, Superlative 1 time (8%)
- Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Feminine, Superlative 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 13 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G1646 appears — 11 distinct verses across 4 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.
Matthew 4 verses
- Matthew 2:6 ἐλαχίστη adj nom sg fem supl 'You Bethlehem, land of Judah, Are in no way least among the princes of Judah: For out of you shall come forth a governor, Who shall shepherd my people, Israel.'"
- Matthew 5:19 ἐλαχίστων ἐλάχιστος adj gen pl fem supl adj nom sg masc supl Whoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and teach others to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
- Matthew 25:40 ἐλαχίστων adj gen pl masc supl "The King will answer them, 'Most assuredly I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'
- Matthew 25:45 ἐλαχίστων adj gen pl masc supl "Then he will answer them, saying, 'Most assuredly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn't do it to one of the least of these, you didn't do it to me.'
Luke 3 verses
- Luke 12:26 ἐλάχιστον adj acc sg neut supl If then you aren't able to do even the least things, why are you anxious about the rest?
- Luke 16:10 ἐλαχίστῳ ἐλαχίστῳ adj dat sg neut supl adj dat sg neut supl He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much. He who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
- Luke 19:17 ἐλαχίστῳ adj dat sg neut supl "He said to him, 'Well done, you good servant! Because you were found faithful with very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.'
1 Corinthians 3 verses
- 1 Corinthians 4:3 ἐλάχιστόν adj acc sg neut supl But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by man's judgment. Yes, I don't judge my own self.
- 1 Corinthians 6:2 ἐλαχίστων adj gen pl neut supl Don't you know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
- 1 Corinthians 15:9 ἐλάχιστος adj nom sg masc supl For I am the least of the apostles, who is not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the assembly of God.
James 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.
The Greek adjective ελαχιστος centers on the idea of “least.” Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 2:6. The Greek New Testament uses it across 11 verses — uncommon. Matthew dominates its distribution — 4 of 11 verses. Sharing its root, it stands alongside μικρος, μικρον and ελασσων. Dig into 11-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1646 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #863
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 863 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 11 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Matthew 4 verses 36%
- Luke 3 verses 27%
- 1 Corinthians 3 verses 27%
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 11 distinct verses.
- Gospels 7 verses · 64%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 27%
- Pauline corpus 3 verses · 27%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 9%
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: Least 7×
- American Standard Version: Least 5×, Very little 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Least 6×, Very little 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Least 7×, Very little 3×, Of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1646 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1646 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 G1646 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1646 across 15 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.
Senses in Thayer's
The 1 sense 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.
- smallest least
Word origin
Derived from μικρος (mikrós) (G3398) — small.
the superlative of ἔλαχυς elachus ( short ); used as equivalent to G3398 ; least (in size amount dignity etc.): - least very little (small) smallest.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 7 distinct written forms G1646 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἐλαχίστων elachístōn | Adjective, Genitive, Plural, Masculine, Superlative | Matthew 25:40 | 4 |
| ἐλαχίστῳ elachístō | Adjective, Dative, Singular, Neuter, Superlative | Luke 16:10 | 3 |
| ἐλάχιστος eláchistos | Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine, Superlative | Matthew 5:19 | 2 |
| ἐλάχιστον eláchiston | Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Neuter, Superlative | Luke 12:26 | 1 |
| ἐλάχιστόν eláchistón | Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Neuter, Superlative | 1 Corinthians 4:3 | 1 |
| ἐλαχίστη elachístē | Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Feminine, Superlative | Matthew 2:6 | 1 |
| ἐλαχίστου elachístou | Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Neuter, Superlative | James 3:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1646, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
