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ἐφάπαξ

once

G2178 Strong's Greek
ephápax Transliteration
/ef-ap'-ax/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 5 appearances

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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, εφαπαξ (ephápax) means “once.” It is rare — just 5 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. The word gravitates to Hebrews (60%), then Romans and 1 Corinthians. Scripture first uses it in Romans 6:10. It clusters with επι, επαγγελλω and επαγω under a shared root. Dig into 5-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
once
Modern gloss
once
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 G2178 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 →

5
distinct verses
The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
3 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
Romans 6:10
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Romans 6:10.
Hebrews 10:10
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Hebrews 10:10.
#1,648
by frequency
Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,648 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 5 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 0 · 0%
  • Acts 0 · 0%
  • Pauline Epistles 2 · 40%
  • General Epistles 3 · 60%
  • 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 5 distinct verses.

  • Hebrews 3 verses · 60%
  • Pauline corpus 2 verses · 40%

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: Once 5×
  • American Standard Version: Once 4×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Once for all 4×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Once and never again 4×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G2178 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Once” 5×

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G2178 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Once” 4×

Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders G2178 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Once for all” 4×

Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 G2178 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Once and never again” 4×

Plus 1 rendering that appears 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.

  1. once, at once

Word origin

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

Part of speech: Adverb TDNT: 07:23,6

From G1909 and G530 ; upon one occasion (only): - (at) once (for all).

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


Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2178, 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).

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 137 — 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.

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.