κἄν
and if
‘and if’ is one of 2 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
- Conditional
- A particle introducing a condition (“if”).
Every verse where G2579 appears — 15 distinct verses across 8 books. 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 2 verses
- Matthew 21:21 κἂν Conditional aram Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly I tell you, if you have faith, and don't doubt, you will not only do what is done to the fig tree, but even if you told this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' it would be done.
- Matthew 26:35 κἂν Conditional aram Peter said to him, "Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you." All of the disciples also said likewise.
Mark 3 verses
- Mark 5:28 κἂν Conditional aram For she said, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be made well."
- Mark 6:56 κἂν Conditional aram Wherever he entered, into villages, or into cities, or into the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch just the fringe of his garment; and as many as touched him were made well.
- Mark 16:18 κἂν Conditional aram they will take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will in no way hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."
Luke 2 verses
John 4 verses
- John 8:14 κἂν Conditional aram Jesus answered them, "Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from, and where I am going; but you don't know where I came from, or where I am going.
- John 8:55 κἂν Conditional aram You have not known him, but I know him. If I said, 'I don't know him,' I would be like you, a liar. But I know him, and keep his word.
- John 10:38 κἂν Conditional aram But if I do them, though you don't believe me, believe the works; that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father."
- John 11:25 κἂν Conditional aram Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet will he live.
Acts 1 verse
2 Corinthians 1 verse
Hebrews 1 verse
James 1 verse
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.
καν — transliterated kán — is a Greek word carrying the sense “and if.” Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 21:21. Spanning 15 verses in 8 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in John (27% of all occurrences). Thayer's distinguishes 2 senses for it. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2579 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 8 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 8 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 15 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 15 distinct verses.
- Gospels 11 verses · 73%
- Johannine 4 verses · 27%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 20%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 7%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 7%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 7%
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: If 5×, Though 4×
- American Standard Version: If 4×, Yet 3×, Even 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: If 8×, Though 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: If 11×, Even 2×, Least 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2579 across 14 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2579 across 14 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 G2579 across 14 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 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2579 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 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.
- and if
- also or even if
Word origin
Derived from και (kaí) (G2532).
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2579, 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
- καγω kagṓ G2504 and I
- καιγε kaíge G2534 and indeed
- καιπερ kaíper G2539 although
- καιτοι kaítoi G2543 and yet
- κακει kakeî G2546 and there
- κακειθεν kakeîthen G2547 of place
- κακεινος kakeînos G2548 and he
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 9 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
