ἀκολουθέω
to follow
‘to follow’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Imperfect-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).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- 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).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
2 verses where G190 appears in the Imperfect tense in the Book of Acts. 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.
Acts
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
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.
- #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 →
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 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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
- to follow one who precedes, join him as his attendant, accompany him
- to join one as a disciple, become or be his disciple
Word origin
Derived from Α (A) (G1) — alpha.
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.
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
- αβαρης abarḗs G4 light
- αβυσσος ábyssos G12 abyss
- αγαμος ágamos G22 unmarried
- αγενεαλογητος agenealógētos G35 without genealogy
- αγενης agenḗs G36 ignoble
- αγναφος ágnaphos G46 unprocessed
- αγνοεω agnoéō G50 to be ignorant
- αγνωσια agnōsía G56 ignorance
- αγνωστος ágnōstos G57 unknown
- αγραμματος agrámmatos G62 unlearned
- αγρυπνεω agrypnéō G69 to watch
- αδαπανος adápanos G77 free
- αδελφος adelphós G80 brother
- αδηλος ádēlos G82 obscure
- αδης háidēs G86 hell
- αδιακριτος adiákritos G87 clear
- αδιαλειπτος adiáleiptos G88 continual
- αδικος ádikos G94 unjust
- αδοκιμος adókimos G96 unapproved
- αδολος ádolos G97 guileless
- αδυνατος adýnatos G102 weak
- αζυμος ázymos G106 unleavened
- αθανασια athanasía G110 immortal
- αθεμιτος athémitos G111 unlawful
+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
- Numbers 22:20 ἀκολουθέω
- Ruth 1:14 ἀκολουθέω
- 1 Samuel 25:42 ἀκολουθέω
- 1 Kings 19:20 ἀκολουθέω
- Isaiah 45:14 ἀκολουθέω
- Ezekiel 29:16 ἀκολουθέω
- Hosea 2:7 ἀκολουθέω
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.
- Numbers 22:20 ἀκολουθέω God came to Balaam at night, and said to him, If the men are come to call you, rise up, go with them; but only the word which I speak to you, that shall you do.
- Ruth 1:14 ἀκολουθέω They lifted up their voice, and wept again: and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth joined with her.
- 1 Samuel 25:42 ἀκολουθέω Abigail hurried, and arose, and rode on a donkey, with five ladies of hers who followed her; and she went after the messengers of David, and became his wife.
- 1 Kings 19:20 ἀκολουθέω He left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray you, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you. He said to him, Go back again; for what have I done to you?
- Isaiah 45:14 ἀκολουθέω Thus says Yahweh: "The labor of Egypt, and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over to you, and they shall be yours. They shall go after you. In chains they shall come over; and they shall fall down to you. They shall make supplication to you: 'Surely God is in you; and there is none else, there is no other god.
- Ezekiel 29:16 ἀκολουθέω It shall be no more the confidence of the house of Israel, bringing iniquity to memory, when they turn to look after them: and they shall know that I am the Lord Yahweh.
- Hosea 2:7 ἀκολουθέω She will follow after her lovers, But she won't overtake them; And she will seek them, But won't find them. Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first husband; For then was it better with me than now.'
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.
