ἀμελέω
to neglect
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).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 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
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 2 times (50%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 time (25%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular 1 time (25%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 4 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G272 appears — 4 distinct verses across 3 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 1 verse
1 Timothy 1 verse
Hebrews 2 verses
- Hebrews 2:3 ἀμελήσαντες aor act ptcp nom pl masc how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation-- which at the first having been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard;
- Hebrews 8:9 ἠμέλησα aor act ind 1sg Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, In the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; For they didn't continue in my covenant, And I disregarded them," says the Lord.
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, αμελεω (ameléō) means “to neglect.” It is rare — just 4 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. Its uses cluster heavily in Hebrews (50% of all occurrences). Scripture first uses it in Matthew 22:5. From the same root come Α, αβαρης and αβυσσος. 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 G272 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,877
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,877 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 4 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 4 distinct verses.
- Hebrews 2 verses · 50%
- Gospels 1 verse · 25%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 25%
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 negligent 1×, I will 1×, Neglect 1×
- American Standard Version: Neglect 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Disregarded 1×, Neglect 1×, They paid no attention 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Did not care about 1×, Do 1×, Having neglected 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G272 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G272 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 G272 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G272 across 5 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 be careless of, to neglect
Word origin
Derived from Α (A) (G1) — alpha.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G272 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀμελήσαντες amelḗsantes | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 22:5 | 2 |
| ἀμέλει amélei | Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular | 1 Timothy 4:14 | 1 |
| ἠμέλησα ēmélēsa | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | Hebrews 8:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G272, 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
- αβαρης abarḗs G4 light
- αβυσσος ábyssos G12 abyss
- αγαμος ágamos G22 unmarried
- αγενεαλογητος agenealógētos G35 without genealogy
- αγενης agenḗs G36 ignoble
- αγναφος ágnaphos G46 unprocessed
- αγνοεω agnoéō G50 to be ignorant
- αγνωσια agnōsía G56 ignorance
- αγνωστος ágnōstos G57 unknown
- αγραμματος agrámmatos G62 unlearned
- αγρυπνεω agrypnéō G69 to watch
- αδαπανος adápanos G77 free
- αδελφος adelphós G80 brother
- αδηλος ádēlos G82 obscure
- αδης háidēs G86 hell
- αδιακριτος adiákritos G87 clear
- αδιαλειπτος adiáleiptos G88 continual
- αδικος ádikos G94 unjust
- αδοκιμος adókimos G96 unapproved
- αδολος ádolos G97 guileless
- αδυνατος adýnatos G102 weak
- αζυμος ázymos G106 unleavened
- αθανασια athanasía G110 immortal
- αθεμιτος athémitos G111 unlawful
+149 more words share this root (not shown).
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 176 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αμελεω appears 2 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 2 verses in 1 book.
- 2
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 2
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Jeremiah 4:17 ἀμελέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G272) 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.
- Jeremiah 4:17 ἀμελέω As keepers of a field are they against her round about, because she has been rebellious against me, says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 38:32 ἀμελέω
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G272) 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.
