κατηγορέω
to accuse
‘to accuse’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Present-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
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms 14 distinct
- Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive 6 times (26%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 3 times (13%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural 2 times (9%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 2 times (9%)
- Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 time (4%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (4%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 time (4%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural 1 time (4%)
+6 more forms (6 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 23 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G2723 appears — 22 distinct verses across 7 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
Mark 3 verses
- Mark 3:2 κατηγορήσωσιν aor act subj 3pl They watched him, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, that they might accuse him.
- Mark 15:3 κατηγόρουν impf act ind 3pl The chief priests accused him of many things.
- Mark 15:4 κατηγοροῦσιν pres act ind 3pl Pilate again asked him, "Have you no answer? See how many things they testify against you!"
Luke 4 verses
- Luke 6:7 κατηγορεῖν pres act inf The scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, that they might find an accusation against him.
- Luke 23:2 κατηγορεῖν pres act inf They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting the nation, forbidding paying taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king."
- Luke 23:10 κατηγοροῦντες pres act ptcp nom pl masc The chief priests and the scribes stood, vehemently accusing him.
- Luke 23:14 κατηγορεῖτε pres act ind 2pl and said to them, "You brought this man to me as one that perverts the people, and see, I have examined him before you, and found no basis for a charge against this man concerning those things of which you accuse him.
John 2 verses
- John 5:45 κατηγορήσω κατηγορῶν fut act ind 1sg pres act ptcp nom sg masc "Don't think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, even Moses, on whom you have set your hope.
- John 8:6 κατηγορεῖν pres act inf They said this testing him, that they might have something to accuse him of. But Jesus stooped down, and wrote on the ground with his finger.
Acts 9 verses
- Acts 22:30 κατηγορεῖται pres pass ind 3sg But on the next day, desiring to know the truth about why he was accused by the Jews, he freed him from the bonds, and commanded the chief priests and all the council to come together, and brought Paul down and set him before them.
- Acts 24:2 κατηγορεῖν pres act inf When he was called, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying, "Seeing that by you we enjoy much peace, and that excellent measures are coming to this nation,
- Acts 24:8 κατηγοροῦμεν pres act ind 1pl By examining him yourself you may ascertain all these things of which we accuse him."
- Acts 24:13 κατηγοροῦσίν pres act ind 3pl Nor can they prove to you the things of which they now accuse me.
- Acts 24:19 κατηγορεῖν pres act inf They ought to have been here before you, and to make accusation, if they had anything against me.
- Acts 25:5 κατηγορείτωσαν pres act impv 3pl "Let them therefore," said he, "that are in power among you go down with me, and if there is anything wrong in the man, let them accuse him."
- Acts 25:11 κατηγοροῦσίν pres act ind 3pl For if I have done wrong, and have committed anything worthy of death, I don't refuse to die; but if none of those things is true that they accuse me of, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar!"
- Acts 25:16 κατηγορούμενος pres pass ptcp nom sg masc To whom I answered that it is not the custom of the Romans to give up any man to destruction, before the accused has met the accusers face to face, and has had opportunity to make his defense concerning the matter laid against him.
- Acts 28:19 κατηγορεῖν pres act inf But when the Jews spoke against it, I was constrained to appeal to Caesar, not that I had anything about which to accuse my nation.
Romans 1 verse
Revelation 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 accuse” is the headline sense of the Greek verb κατηγορεω (katēgoréō). Translators differ — “accuse” in the King James Version, then “accusing” (unfoldingWord Literal Text), as the renderings breakdown shows. It turns up in 22 verses across 7 books, an uncommon footprint. It concentrates in Acts, which alone accounts for 41% of its uses. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2723 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 →
- 22
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 22 distinct verses.
- 7 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
- #563
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 563 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 22 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 22 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 13 verses · 59%
- Gospels 11 verses · 50%
- Johannine 3 verses · 14%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 5%
- Revelation 1 verse · 5%
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: Accuse 8×, They might accuse 3×, Accused 2×
- American Standard Version: Accuse 6×, Accused 2×, Accusing 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Accuse 5×, Accusing 3×, Charges 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Accusing 5×, Accuse 3×, Are accusing 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2723 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2723 across 21 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2723 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2723 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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.
- before a judge: to make an accusation
- of an extra-judicial accusation
Word origin
Derived from κατηγορος (katḗgoros) (G2725) — accuser.
From G2725 ; to be a plaintiff that is to charge with some offence : - accuse object.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 15 distinct written forms G2723 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2723, 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 κατηγορεω appears 1 time in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 1 verse in 1 book.
- 1
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 1
- verse
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Daniel 6:5 καταἠγορέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2723) 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.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2723) 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.
