κακῶς
miserable
‘miserable’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
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 G2560 appears in the Book of Matthew — 7 distinct verses. 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.
Matthew
- Matthew 4:24 κακῶς adv The report about him went out into all Syria. They brought to him all who were sick, afflicted with various diseases and torments, possessed with demons, epileptics, and paralytics; and he healed them.
- Matthew 8:16 κακῶς adv When evening came, they brought to him many possessed with demons. He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick;
- Matthew 9:12 κακῶς adv When Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do.
- Matthew 14:35 κακῶς adv When the men of that place recognized him, they sent into all that surrounding region, and brought to him all who were sick,
- Matthew 15:22 κακῶς adv Behold, a Canaanite woman came out from those borders, and cried, saying, "Have mercy on me, Lord, you son of David! My daughter is severely demonized!"
- Matthew 17:15 κακῶς adv "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is epileptic, and suffers grievously; for he often falls into the fire, and often into the water.
- Matthew 21:41 κακῶς adv They told him, "He will miserably destroy those miserable men, and will lease out the vineyard to other farmers, who will give him the fruit in its season."
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.
κακως (kakōs) is a Greek verb most often rendered “miserable.” Where the King James Version says “sick,” newer translations reach for “sickness” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Greek New Testament uses it across 16 verses — uncommon. Matthew dominates its distribution — 7 of 16 verses. Its lexical range runs to 3 senses. 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 G2560 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 →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #726
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 726 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 16 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 16 distinct verses.
- Gospels 14 verses · 88%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 19%
- Johannine 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: Sick 8×, Diseased 2×, Evil 2×
- American Standard Version: Sick 8×, Evil 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Sick 8×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Sickness 10×, Severely 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2560 across 16 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2560 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 G2560 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 G2560 across 16 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.
Senses in Thayer's
The 3 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.
- miserable, to be ill
- improperly, wrongly
- to speak ill of, revile, one
Word origin
Derived from κακος (kakós) (G2556) — evil.
Adverb from G2556 ; badly (physically or morally): - amiss diseased evil grievously miserably sick sore.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2560, 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
- ηττον hḗtton G2276 less
- κακια kakía G2549 malice
- κακοηθεια kakoḗtheia G2550 maliciousness
- κακολογεω kakologéō G2551 to revile
- κακοπαθεια kakopátheia G2552 suffering
- κακοποιος kakopoiós G2555 evildoer
- κακουργος kakoûrgos G2557 malefactor
- κακουχεω kakouchéō G2558 to treat ill
- κακοω kakóō G2559 to oppress
- χειρων cheírōn G5501 worse
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 12 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word κακως appears 7 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 6 verses in 5 books.
- 7
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 6
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 22:27 κακῶς
- Leviticus 19:14 κακῶς
- Isaiah 8:21 κακῶς
- Jeremiah 7:9 κακῶς
- Ezekiel 34:4 κακῶς
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2560) 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.
- Exodus 22:27 κακῶς for that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin. What would he sleep in? It will happen, when he cries to me, that I will hear, for I am gracious.
- Leviticus 19:14 κακῶς "'You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind; but you shall fear your God. I am Yahweh.
- Leviticus 20:9 κακῶς "'For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death: he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.
- Isaiah 8:21 κακῶς They shall pass through it, sore distressed and hungry; and it shall happen that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse by their king and by their God, and turn their faces upward:
- Jeremiah 7:9 κακῶς Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known,
- Ezekiel 34:4 κακῶς You haven't strengthened the diseased, neither have you healed that which was sick, neither have you bound up that which was broken, neither have you brought back that which was driven away, neither have you sought that which was lost; but with force and with rigor have you ruled over them.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2560) 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.
