καταλαλέω
to speak against
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
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G2635 appears — 3 distinct verses across 2 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.
James 1 verse
1 Peter 2 verses
- 1 Peter 2:12 καταλαλοῦσιν pres act ind 3pl having good behavior among the nations, so in that which they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they see, glorify God in the day of visitation.
- 1 Peter 3:16 καταλαλεῖσθε pres pass ind 2pl having a good conscience; that, while you are spoken against as evildoers, they may be disappointed who curse your good manner of life in Christ.
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, καταλαλεω (katalaléō) means “to speak against.” A scarce word — 3 verses in all of the Greek New Testament. Its uses cluster heavily in 1 Peter (67% of all occurrences). Scripture first uses it in James 4:11. Sharing its root, it stands alongside καταλαλος and καταλαλια. Dig into 3-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2635 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.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,648
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,648 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
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.
- General (Catholic) Epistles 3 verses · 100%
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: Evil 1×, He that speaketh evil 1×, Speak 1×
- American Standard Version: Speaketh against 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Speaks against 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Do 1×, Speak against 1×, Speaking against 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2635 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2635 across 6 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2635 across 5 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2635 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 speak against one, to criminate, traduce
Word origin
Derived from καταλαλος (katálalos) (G2637) — defamer.
From G2637 ; to be a traducer that is to slander : - speak against (evil of).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G2635 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| καταλαλεῖ katalaleî | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | James 4:11 | 1 |
| καταλαλεῖσθε katalaleîsthe | Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural | 1 Peter 3:16 | 1 |
| καταλαλεῖτε katalaleîte | Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural | James 4:11 | 1 |
| καταλαλοῦσιν katalaloûsin | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | 1 Peter 2:12 | 1 |
| καταλαλῶν katalalō̂n | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | James 4:11 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2635, 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 → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word καταλαλεω appears 13 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 13 verses in 7 books.
- 13
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 13
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Numbers 12:8 καταλαλέω
- Job 19:3 καταλαλέω
- Psalms 49:20 καταλαλέω
- Proverbs 20:13 καταλαλέω
- Hosea 7:13 καταλαλέω
- Micah 3:7 καταλαλέω
- Malachi 3:13 καταλαλέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2635) 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.
- Numbers 12:8 καταλαλέω with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches; and the form of Yahweh shall he see: why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?
- Numbers 21:5 καταλαλέω The people spoke against God, and against Moses, Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, and there is no water; and our soul loathes this light bread.
- Numbers 21:7 καταλαλέω The people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, because we have spoken against Yahweh, and against you; pray to Yahweh, that he take away the serpents from us. Moses prayed for the people.
- Job 19:3 καταλαλέω You have reproached me ten times. You aren't ashamed that you attack me.
- Psalms 49:20 καταλαλέω A man who has riches without understanding, Is like the animals that perish.
- Psalms 77:19 καταλαλέω Your way was through the sea; Your paths through the great waters. Your footsteps were not known.
- Psalms 100:5 καταλαλέω For Yahweh is good. His loving kindness endures forever, His faithfulness to all generations.
- Psalms 118:23 καταλαλέω This is Yahweh's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.
- Proverbs 20:13 καταλαλέω Don't love sleep, lest you come to poverty; Open your eyes, and you shall be satisfied with bread.
- Hosea 7:13 καταλαλέω Woe to them! For they have wandered from me. Destruction to them! For they have trespassed against me. Though I would redeem them, Yet they have spoken lies against me.
- Micah 3:7 καταλαλέω The seers shall be disappointed, And the diviners confounded. Yes, they shall all cover their lips; For there is no answer from God."
- Malachi 3:13 καταλαλέω "Your words have been stout against me," says Yahweh. "Yet you say, 'What have we spoken against you?'
- Malachi 3:16 καταλαλέω Then those who feared Yahweh spoke one with another; and Yahweh listened, and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those who feared Yahweh, and who honored his name.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2635) 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.
