καταγελάω
to mock
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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Tense
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G2606 appears in the Book of Matthew — 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.
Matthew
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, καταγελαω (katageláō) means “to mock.” The Greek New Testament uses it only 3 verses. The word gravitates to Matthew (33%), then Mark and Luke. First canonically at Matthew 9:24, it enters the text early. 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 G2606 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.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 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 →
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.
- Gospels 3 verses · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 33%
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: Scorn 3×, They laughed 3×
- American Standard Version: Scorn 3×, They laughed 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: They laughed at 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: They were laughing 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2606 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2606 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2606 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2606 across 3 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.
- to deride
Word origin
Origin: a primitive root
To laugh down that is deride : - laugh to scorn.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word καταγελαω appears 15 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 15 verses in 6 books.
- 15
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 15
- 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
- Genesis 38:23 καταγελάω
- 2 Chronicles 30:10 καταγελάω
- Job 5:22 καταγελάω
- Psalms 24:2 καταγελάω
- Proverbs 17:5 καταγελάω
- Micah 3:7 καταγελάω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2606) 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 38:23 καταγελάω Judah said, "Let her keep it, lest we be shamed. Behold, I sent this kid, and you haven't found her."
- 2 Chronicles 30:10 καταγελάω So the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even to Zebulun: but they ridiculed them, and mocked them.
- Job 5:22 καταγελάω At destruction and famine you shall laugh, Neither shall you be afraid of the animals of the earth.
- Job 9:23 καταγελάω If the scourge kills suddenly, He will mock at the trial of the innocent.
- Job 21:3 καταγελάω Allow me, and I also will speak; After I have spoken, mock on.
- Job 30:1 καταγελάω "But now those who are younger than I, have me in derision, Whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs.
- Job 39:7 καταγελάω He scorns the tumult of the city, Neither hears he the shouting of the driver.
- Job 39:18 καταγελάω When she lifts up herself on high, She scorns the horse and his rider.
- Job 39:22 καταγελάω He mocks at fear, and is not dismayed; Neither does he turn back from the sword.
- Job 41:21 καταγελάω His breath kindles coals. A flame goes forth from his mouth.
- Psalms 24:2 καταγελάω For he has founded it on the seas, And established it on the floods.
- Proverbs 17:5 καταγελάω Whoever mocks the poor reproaches his Maker. He who is glad at calamity shall not be unpunished.
- Proverbs 29:9 καταγελάω If a wise man goes to court with a foolish man, The fool rages or scoffs, and there is no peace.
- Proverbs 30:17 καταγελάω The eye that mocks at his father, And scorns obedience to his mother: The ravens of the valley shall pick it out, The young eagles shall eat it.
- Micah 3:7 καταγελάω The seers shall be disappointed, And the diviners confounded. Yes, they shall all cover their lips; For there is no answer from God."
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2606) 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.
