καταναρκάω
to be numb
‘to be numb’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Aorist-tense verb in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Tense
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Person
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 2 times (67%)
- Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 time (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 3 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G2655 appears — 3 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
2 Corinthians 3 verses
- 2 Corinthians 11:8 κατενάρκησα aor act ind 1sg I robbed other assemblies, taking wages from them that I might serve you.
- 2 Corinthians 12:13 κατενάρκησα aor act ind 1sg For what is there in which you were made inferior to the rest of the assemblies, unless it is that I myself was not a burden to you? Forgive me this wrong.
- 2 Corinthians 12:14 καταναρκήσω fut act ind 1sg Behold, this is the third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not be a burden to you; for I seek not your possessions, but you. For the children ought not to save up for the parents, but the parents for the children.
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, καταναρκαω (katanarkáō) means “to be numb.” It is rare — just 3 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. The word gravitates to 2 Corinthians (100%). First canonically at 2 Corinthians 11:8, it enters the text early. Catalogued under 3 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Dig into 3-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2655 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.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 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 →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Corinthians 3 verses 100%
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.
- Pauline corpus 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: Be burdensome 1×, Burdensome 1×, Chargeable 1×
- American Standard Version: Be a burden 1×, Burden 1×, Burden on 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: I was not a burden 1×, I will not be a burden 1×, Was not a burden 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Burden 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2655 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2655 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2655 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2655 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.
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.
- to cause to grow numb or torpid
- to be torpid, inactive, to be to the detriment of one
- to weigh heavily upon, be burdensome to
Word origin
Derived from κατα (katá) (G2596) — down.
From G2596 and ναρκάω narkaō (to be numb ); to grow utterly torpid that is (by implication) slothful (figuratively expensive ): - be burdensome (chargeable).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G2655 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| κατενάρκησα katenárkēsa | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | 2 Corinthians 11:8 | 2 |
| καταναρκήσω katanarkḗsō | Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | 2 Corinthians 12:14 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2655, 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
- καθα kathá G2505 according as
- καθαιρεω kathairéō G2507 to tear down
- καθαπτω katháptō G2510 to fasten down
- καθεδρα kathédra G2515 seat
- καθεζομαι kathézomai G2516 to sit down
- καθεξης kathexēs G2517 in order
- καθευδω katheúdō G2518 to fall asleep
- καθηγητης kathēgētḗs G2519 guide
- καθηκω kathḗkō G2520 to come down
- καθημαι káthēmai G2521 to sit down
- καθημερινος kathēmerinós G2522 daily
- καθιημι kathíēmi G2524 to send down
- καθιστημι kathístēmi G2525 to place
- καθο kathó G2526 according to what
- καθολου kathólou G2527 wholly
- καθοπλιζω kathoplízō G2528 to arm
- καθοραω kathoráō G2529 to see clearly
- καθοτι kathóti G2530 according to what
- καθως kathṓs G2531 according as
- καμμυω kammýō G2576 to close eyes
- καταβαινω katabaínō G2597 to descend
- καταβαλλω katabállō G2598 to cast down
- καταβαρεω katabaréō G2599 to weigh down
- καταβιβαζω katabibázō G2601 to bring down
+103 more words share this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 129 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
