Α
alpha
‘alpha’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Every verse where G1 appears — 3 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
Revelation 3 verses
- Revelation 1:8 ἄλφα n letter indecl "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."
- Revelation 21:6 ἄλφα n letter indecl He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give freely to him who is thirsty from the spring of the water of life.
- Revelation 22:13 ἄλφα n letter indecl I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
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.
Α — transliterated A — is a Greek word carrying the sense “alpha.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Revelation. Its earliest occurrence is Revelation 1:8. Thayer's distinguishes 2 senses for it. See the sense tree, 3-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,203
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,203 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 3 verses 100%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Johannine 3 verses · 100%
- Revelation 3 verses · 100%
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: Alpha 4×
- American Standard Version: Alpha 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Alpha 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Alpha 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- first letter of Greek alphabet
- Christ is the Alpha to indicate that he is the beginning and the end
Word origin
Origin: of hebrew origin
Of hebrew origin; the first letter of the alphabet : figuratively only (from its use as a numeral) the first . Often used (usually an before a vowel) also in composition (as a contraction from G427 ) in the sense of privation ; so in many words beginning with this letter; occasionally in the sense of union (as a contraction of G260): - Alpha.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1, 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.
Derived from this word
- 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
+150 more words derive from G1 (not shown).
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 176 — 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 Α appears 15 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 13 verses in 6 books.
- 15
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 13
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1) 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 21:17 ἆ Then sang Israel this song: Spring up, well; sing you to it:
- Judges 6:22 ἆ Gideon saw that he was the angel of Yahweh; and Gideon said, Alas, Lord Yahweh! because I have seen the angel of Yahweh face to face.
- Judges 11:35 ἆ It happened, when he saw her, that he tore his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! you have brought me very low, and you are one of those who trouble me; for I have opened my mouth to Yahweh, and I can't go back.
- Psalms 32:3 ἆ When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
- Psalms 95:1 ἆ Oh come, let's sing to Yahweh. Let's shout aloud to the rock of our salvation!
- Psalms 97:1 ἆ Yahweh reigns! Let the earth rejoice! Let the multitude of islands be glad!
- Psalms 149:1 ἆ Praise Yahweh! Sing to Yahweh a new song, His praise in the assembly of the saints.
- Ecclesiastes 7:5 ἆ It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.
- Ecclesiastes 12:4 ἆ And the doors shall be shut in the street; When the sound of the grinding is low, And one shall rise up at the voice of a bird, And all the daughters of music shall be brought low;
- Song of Solomon 1:1 ἆ The Song of songs, which is Solomon's. Beloved
- Isaiah 5:1 ἆ Let me sing for my well beloved a song of my beloved about his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.
- Isaiah 23:15 ἆ It shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king: after the end of seventy years it shall be to Tyre as in the song of the prostitute.
- Isaiah 26:1 ἆ In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah: we have a strong city; salvation will he appoint for walls and bulwarks.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1) 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.