ἐμπτύω
to spit upon
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).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
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).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Future, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive 1 time (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 6 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G1716 appears — 6 distinct verses across 3 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 2 verses
Mark 3 verses
- Mark 10:34 ἐμπτύσουσιν fut act ind 3pl They will mock him, spit on him, scourge him, and kill him. On the third day he will rise again."
- Mark 14:65 ἐμπτύειν pres act inf Some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to beat him with fists, and to tell him, "Prophesy!" The officers struck him with the palms of their hands.
- Mark 15:19 ἐνέπτυον impf act ind 3pl They struck his head with a reed, and spat on him, and bowing their knees, did homage to him.
Luke 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.
“to spit upon” is the headline sense of the Greek verb εμπτυω (emptýō). It clusters heavily in Mark, which alone accounts for 50% of its uses. With 6 verses in 3 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. First canonically at Matthew 26:67, it enters the text early. It clusters with εν, εγγραφω and εγγυος under a shared root. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1716 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.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 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 →
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.
- Gospels 6 verses · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 17%
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: Did spit 1×, Did they spit 1×, Shall spit upon 1×
- American Standard Version: Did they spit 1×, Shall spit upon 1×, Spat 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Spit on 2×, They spit 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Spit on 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1716 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1716 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1716 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 G1716 across 6 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.
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.
- to spit upon
Word origin
Derived from εν (en) (G1722).
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G1716 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἐμπτυσθήσεται emptysthḗsetai | Verb, Future, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 18:32 | 1 |
| ἐμπτύειν emptýein | Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive | Mark 14:65 | 1 |
| ἐμπτύσαντες emptýsantes | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 27:30 | 1 |
| ἐμπτύσουσιν emptýsousin | Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Mark 10:34 | 1 |
| ἐνέπτυον enéptyon | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Mark 15:19 | 1 |
| ἐνέπτυσαν enéptysan | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Matthew 26:67 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1716, 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
- εγγραφω engráphō G1449 to inscribe
- εγγυος éngyos G1450 surety
- εγκαθετος enkáthetos G1455 to spy
- εγκαινια enkaínia G1456 dedication
- εγκαλεω enkaléō G1458 to accuse
- εγκαταλειπω enkataleípō G1459 to abandon
- εγκατοικεω enkatoikéō G1460 to dwell
- εγκεντριζω enkentrízō G1461 to graft
- εγκομβοομαι enkombóomai G1463 band
- εγκοπτω enkóptō G1465 to hinder
- εγκρατης enkratḗs G1468 strong
- εγκρινω enkrínō G1469 to judge worthy
- εγκρυπτω enkrýptō G1470 to conceal
- εγκυος énkyos G1471 pregnant
- εγχριω enchríō G1472 to anoint
- ελλογεω ellogéō G1677 impute
- εμβαινω embaínō G1684 to enter
- εμβαλλω embállō G1685 to cast in
- εμβαπτω embáptō G1686 to dip in
- εμβατευω embateúō G1687 to enter
- εμβιβαζω embibázō G1688 to lead in
- εμβλεπω emblépō G1689 to look at
- εμβριμαομαι embrimáomai G1690 to warn sternly
- εμμαινομαι emmaínomai G1693 to rage against
+58 more words share this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 84 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word εμπτυω 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
- Numbers 12:14 ἐνπτύω
- Deuteronomy 25:9 ἐνπτύω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1716) 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 12:14 ἐνπτύω Yahweh said to Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, shouldn't she be ashamed seven days? let her be shut up outside of the camp seven days, and after that she shall be brought in again.
- Deuteronomy 25:9 ἐνπτύω then his brother's wife shall come to him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face; and she shall answer and say, So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1716) 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.
