κατανύσσω
to pierce
‘to pierce’ 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Tense
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
Voice
- Passive
- The subject receives 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 G2660 appears — 1 distinct verse 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.
Acts 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.
“to pierce” is the headline sense of the Greek verb κατανυσσω (katanýssō). A scarce word — 1 verse in all of the Greek New Testament. More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Acts. It occurs only once, in Acts 2:37. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. See the sense tree, 1-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2660 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 →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 of 27 New Testament books.
- #3,503
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 3,503 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 1 verse 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 1 distinct verse.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 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: They were pricked 1×
- American Standard Version: This 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: They were cut 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: They were pierced 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2660 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2660 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2660 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2660 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
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.
- to prick, pierce
- metaph. to pain the mind sharply, agitate it vehemently
Word origin
Derived from κατα (katá) (G2596) — down.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2660, 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).
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 130 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word κατανυσσω appears 9 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 9 verses in 4 books.
- 9
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 9
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Leviticus 10:3 κατανύσσω
- 1 Kings 20:27 κατανύσσω
- Psalms 4:5 κατανύσσω
- Isaiah 6:5 κατανύσσω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2660) 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.
- Leviticus 10:3 κατανύσσω Then Moses said to Aaron, "This is what Yahweh spoke of, saying, "'I will show myself holy to those who come near me, And before all the people I will be glorified.'" Aaron held his peace.
- 1 Kings 20:27 κατανύσσω The children of Israel were mustered, and were provisioned, and went against them: and the children of Israel encamped before them like two little flocks of kids; but the Syrians filled the country.
- 1 Kings 20:29 κατανύσσω They encamped one over against the other seven days. So it was, that in the seventh day the battle was joined; and the children of Israel killed of the Syrians one hundred thousand footmen in one day.
- Psalms 4:5 κατανύσσω Offer the sacrifices of righteousness. Put your trust in Yahweh.
- Psalms 29:13 κατανύσσω
- Psalms 34:15 κατανύσσω Yahweh's eyes are toward the righteous. His ears listen to their cry.
- Psalms 108:16 κατανύσσω
- Isaiah 6:5 κατανύσσω Then I said, "Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of Hosts!"
- Isaiah 47:5 κατανύσσω Sit you silent, and get you into darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans; for you shall no more be called The mistress of kingdoms.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2660) 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.
