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ἀκολουθέω

to follow

‘to follow’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓

G190 Strong's Greek
akolouthéō Transliteration
/ak-ol-oo-theh'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 91 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, ακολουθεω (akolouthéō) means “to follow.” First canonically at Matthew 4:20, it enters the text early. It appears 86 verses across 7 books of the Greek New Testament, among its moderately common vocabulary. The word gravitates to Matthew (28%), then John and Luke. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Dig into 86-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
follow
Modern gloss
to follow
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 G190 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 →

86
distinct verses
The word appears in 86 distinct verses.
7 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 4:20
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 4:20.
Revelation 19:14
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 19:14.
#191
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 191 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 86 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 75 · 87%
  • Acts 4 · 5%
  • Pauline Epistles 1 · 1%
  • General Epistles 0 · 0%
  • Revelation 6 · 7%

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 86 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 75 verses · 87%
  • Johannine 24 verses · 28%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 21 verses · 24%
  • Revelation 6 verses · 7%
  • Pauline corpus 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: Followed 43×, Follow 22×, They followed 4×
  • American Standard Version: Followed 44×, Follow 24×, Following 3×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Followed 37×, Follow 25×, Following 4×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Follow 25×, Followed 24×, Following 8×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G190 across 93 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Followed” 43×
  • “Follow” 22×
  • “They followed” 4×
  • “Following” 3×
  • “He followeth” 3×
  • “I will follow” 3×
  • “Have followed” 2×

Plus 13 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 G190 across 91 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Followed” 44×
  • “Follow” 24×
  • “Following” 3×
  • “Had followed” 2×
  • “Have followed” 2×
  • “I will follow” 2×
  • “They followed” 2×

Plus 12 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 G190 across 89 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Followed” 37×
  • “Follow” 25×
  • “Following” 4×
  • “I will follow” 3×
  • “Accompanied by” 2×
  • “Had followed” 2×
  • “He does not accompany” 2×
  • “They followed” 2×

Plus 12 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 G190 across 94 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Follow” 25×
  • “Followed” 24×
  • “Following” 8×
  • “Was following” 7×
  • “I will follow” 3×
  • “They followed” 3×
  • “Having followed” 2×
  • “He followed” 2×
  • “He was following” 2×
  • “Were following” 2×

Plus 16 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 2 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 follow one who precedes, join him as his attendant, accompany him
  2. to join one as a disciple, become or be his disciple

Word origin

Derived from Α (A) (G1) — alpha.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 04:30,3

From G1 (as a particle of union) and κέλευθος keleuthos (a road ); properly to be in the same way with that is to accompany (specifically as a disciple): - follow reach.

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


Forms in the corpus

The 26 distinct written forms G190 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἠκολούθησαν ēkoloúthēsan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 4:20 19
ἠκολούθει ēkoloúthei Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 9:9 15
ἀκολούθει akoloúthei Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 8:22 12
ἀκολουθεῖ akoloutheî Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 10:38 5
ἠκολούθησεν ēkoloúthēsen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 20:29 5
ἀκολουθείτω akoloutheítō Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 16:24 4
ἀκολουθοῦντες akolouthoûntes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 21:9 4
ἀκολουθήσω akolouthḗsō Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Matthew 8:19 3
ἀκολουθοῦσιν akolouthoûsin Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 6:1 2
ἀκολουθήσατε akolouthḗsate Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Mark 14:13 2
ἀκολουθῆσαι akolouthē̂sai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive John 13:36 2
ἀκολουθῶν akolouthō̂n Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine John 8:12 2
ἠκολουθήσαμέν ēkolouthḗsamén Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Matthew 19:27 2
ἠκολούθουν ēkoloúthoun Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 2:15 2
ἀκολουθήσαντές akolouthḗsantés Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 19:28 1
ἀκολουθήσεις akolouthḗseis Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular John 13:36 1
ἀκολουθήσουσιν akolouthḗsousin Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural John 10:5 1
ἀκολουθεῖν akoloutheîn Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive Mark 8:34 1
ἀκολουθησάντων akolouthēsántōn Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine John 1:41 1
ἀκολουθούσης akolouthoúsēs Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Feminine 1 Corinthians 10:4 1
ἀκολουθοῦντα akolouthoûnta Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine John 21:20 1
ἀκολουθοῦντας akolouthoûntas Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine John 1:38 1
ἀκολουθοῦντι akolouthoûnti Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Dative, Singular, Masculine Luke 7:9 1
ἀκολουθοῦσίν akolouthoûsín Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural John 10:27 1
ἠκολουθήκαμέν ēkolouthḗkamén Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Mark 10:28 1
Ἠκολούθει Ēkoloúthei Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular John 18:15 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G190, 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

+149 more words share this root (not shown).

Derived from this word

Proper names from this root

People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 177 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word ακολουθεω appears 7 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 7 verses in 7 books.

7
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
7
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

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G190) 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.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G190) 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).

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