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ἐπιγινώσκω

to know thoroughly

‘to know thoroughly’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓

G1921 Strong's Greek
epiginṓskō Transliteration
/ep-ig-in-oce'-ko/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 44 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.

“to know thoroughly” is the headline sense of the Greek verb επιγινωσκω (epiginṓskō). Lexicons map it across 5 senses. With 40 verses in 10 books, it is a moderately common word in the Greek New Testament. It concentrates in Acts, which alone accounts for 33% of its uses. First canonically at Matthew 7:16, it enters the text early. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
acknowledge
Modern gloss
to know thoroughly
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G1921 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 →

40
distinct verses
The word appears in 40 distinct verses.
10 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 7:16
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 7:16.
2 Peter 2:21
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in 2 Peter 2:21.
#343
by frequency
Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 343 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 40 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 16 · 40%
  • Acts 13 · 33%
  • Pauline Epistles 10 · 25%
  • General Epistles 1 · 3%
  • Revelation 0 · 0%

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 40 distinct verses.

  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 20 verses · 50%
  • Gospels 16 verses · 40%
  • Pauline corpus 10 verses · 25%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 3%

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: They knew 7×, Knew 3×, Know 2×
  • American Standard Version: Knew 4×, Know 3×, Perceiving 3×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Know 3×, Recognized 3×, Have known 2×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Having recognized 3×, Know 3×, Recognize 3×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G1921 across 43 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “They knew” 7×
  • “Knew” 3×
  • “Know” 2×
  • “Knoweth” 2×
  • “Knowing” 2×
  • “Perceived” 2×
  • “She knew” 2×
  • “Ye shall know” 2×

Plus 21 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 G1921 across 43 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Knew” 4×
  • “Know” 3×
  • “Perceiving” 3×
  • “They knew” 3×
  • “Acknowledge” 2×
  • “He knew” 2×
  • “She knew” 2×
  • “They perceived” 2×
  • “They took knowledge” 2×
  • “Ye shall know” 2×

Plus 18 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 G1921 across 44 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Know” 3×
  • “Recognized” 3×
  • “Have known” 2×
  • “Knows” 2×
  • “They did not recognize” 2×
  • “They realized” 2×
  • “They recognized” 2×
  • “Understand” 2×
  • “You will recognize” 2×

Plus 24 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 G1921 across 51 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Having recognized” 3×
  • “Know” 3×
  • “Recognize” 3×
  • “They recognized” 3×
  • “Having known” 2×
  • “Having learned” 2×
  • “Knowing” 2×
  • “Knows” 2×
  • “Learn” 2×
  • “Recognizing” 2×
  • “You will recognize” 2×

Plus 25 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 5 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 become thoroughly acquainted with, to know thoroughly
  2. to recognise
  3. to know i.e. to perceive
  4. to know i.e. to find out, ascertain
  5. to know i.e. to understand

Word origin

Derived from επι (epí) (G1909) — upon.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 12:29,1

From G1909 and G1097 ; to know upon some mark that is recognise ; by implication to become fully acquainted with to acknowledge : - (ac- have take) know (-ledge well) perceive.

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


Forms in the corpus

The 22 distinct written forms G1921 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἐπιγνοὺς epignoùs Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Mark 2:8 5
ἐπιγνόντες epignóntes Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 14:35 5
ἐπέγνωσαν epégnōsan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 17:12 4
ἐπιγνῶναι epignō̂nai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Luke 24:16 4
ἐπιγινώσκετε epiginṓskete Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural 2 Corinthians 1:13 3
ἐπιγνώσεσθε epignṓsesthe Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 7:16 3
ἐπέγνωτε epégnōte Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural 2 Corinthians 1:14 2
ἐπεγίνωσκον epegínōskon Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Acts 3:10 2
ἐπιγινώσκει epiginṓskei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 11:27 2
ἐπιγνοῦσα epignoûsa Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Luke 7:37 2
ἐπέγνωμεν epégnōmen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Acts 28:1 1
ἐπεγίνωσκόν epegínōskón Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Acts 4:13 1
ἐπεγνωκέναι epegnōkénai Verb, Perfect, Active, Infinitive 2 Peter 2:21 1
ἐπεγνωκόσι epegnōkósi Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Dative, Plural, Masculine 1 Timothy 4:3 1
ἐπεγνώσθην epegnṓsthēn Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 Corinthians 13:12 1
ἐπιγινωσκέτω epiginōskétō Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular 1 Corinthians 14:37 1
ἐπιγινωσκόμενοι epiginōskómenoi Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 2 Corinthians 6:9 1
ἐπιγινώσκεις epiginṓskeis Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Acts 25:10 1
ἐπιγνοῦσιν epignoûsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Dative, Plural, Masculine 2 Peter 2:21 1
ἐπιγνώσομαι epignṓsomai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 Corinthians 13:12 1
ἐπιγνῷ epignō̂ Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Acts 22:24 1
ἐπιγνῷς epignō̂s Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Singular Luke 1:4 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1921, 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

+110 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 138 — 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 επιγινωσκω appears 96 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 94 verses in 24 books.

96
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
94
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
24 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 24 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1921) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 94. 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 (G1921) 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).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.