ἀληθῶς
truly
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Adverb
- A word that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb.
Every verse where G230 appears in the Book of 1 John — 1 distinct verse. 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.
1 John
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.
The Greek verb αληθως centers on the idea of “truly.” Where the King James Version says “truth,” newer translations reach for “truly” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Greek New Testament uses it across 18 verses — uncommon. John dominates its distribution — 7 of 18 verses. First canonically at Matthew 14:33, it enters the text early. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G230 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 →
- 18
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 18 distinct verses.
- 7 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
- #664
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 664 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 18 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 18 distinct verses.
- Gospels 15 verses · 83%
- Johannine 8 verses · 44%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 4 verses · 22%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 6%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 6%
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: Truth 7×, Indeed 5×, Surely 3×
- American Standard Version: Truth 11×, Indeed 5×, Truly 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Truly 11×, Surely 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Truly 17×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G230 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G230 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 G230 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 G230 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- truly, of a truth, in reality, most certainly
Word origin
Derived from αληθης (alēthḗs) (G227) — true.
Adverb from G227 ; truly : - indeed surely of a surety truly of a (in) truth verily very.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G230, 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
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αληθως appears 13 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 13 verses in 10 books.
- 13
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 13
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 18:13 ἀληθῶς
- Exodus 33:16 ἀληθῶς
- Deuteronomy 17:4 ἀληθῶς
- Joshua 7:20 ἀληθῶς
- Ruth 3:12 ἀληθῶς
- 1 Samuel 22:7 ἀληθῶς
- 1 Kings 8:27 ἀληθῶς
- 2 Chronicles 6:18 ἀληθῶς
- Psalms 57:2 ἀληθῶς
- Jeremiah 28:13 ἀληθῶς
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G230) 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.
- Genesis 18:13 ἀληθῶς Yahweh said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, saying, 'Will I really bear a child, yet I am old?'
- Genesis 20:12 ἀληθῶς Moreover she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.
- Exodus 33:16 ἀληθῶς For how would people know that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Isn't it in that you go with us, so that we are separated, I and your people, from all the people who are on the surface of the earth?"
- Deuteronomy 17:4 ἀληθῶς and it be told you, and you have heard of it, then shall you inquire diligently; and, behold, if it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is done in Israel,
- Joshua 7:20 ἀληθῶς Achan answered Joshua, and said, Of a truth I have sinned against Yahweh, the God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:
- Ruth 3:12 ἀληθῶς Now it is true that I am a near kinsman; however there is a kinsman nearer than I.
- 1 Samuel 22:7 ἀληθῶς Saul said to his servants who stood about him, Hear now, you Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give everyone of you fields and vineyards, will he make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds,
- 1 Kings 8:27 ἀληθῶς But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can't contain you; how much less this house that I have built!
- 1 Kings 18:39 ἀληθῶς When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, Yahweh, he is God; Yahweh, he is God.
- 2 Chronicles 6:18 ἀληθῶς But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can't contain you; how much less this house which I have built!
- Psalms 57:2 ἀληθῶς I cry out to God Most High, To God who accomplishes my requests for me.
- Jeremiah 28:13 ἀληθῶς Go, and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus says Yahweh: You have broken the bars of wood; but you have made in their place bars of iron.
- Jeremiah 35:6 ἀληθῶς But they said, We will drink no wine; for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying, You shall drink no wine, neither you, nor your sons, forever:
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G230) 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.
