κείρω
to shear
‘to shear’ is one of 3 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
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Middle
- The subject acts on or for itself, or with special interest in the action.
Mood
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Masculine 1 time (25%)
- Verb, Aorist, Middle, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (25%)
- Verb, Aorist, Middle, Infinitive 1 time (25%)
- Verb, Aorist, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 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 G2751 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.
Acts 2 verses
- Acts 8:32 κείραντος aor act ptcp gen sg masc Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. As a lamb before his shearer is silent, So he doesn't open his mouth.
- Acts 18:18 κειράμενος aor mid ptcp nom sg masc Paul, having stayed after this many more days, took his leave of the brothers, and sailed from there for Syria, together with Priscilla and Aquila. He shaved his head in Cenchreae, for he had a vow.
1 Corinthians 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.
The Greek verb κειρω centers on the idea of “to shear.” It is rare — just 3 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. Acts dominates its distribution — 2 of 3 verses. First canonically at Acts 8:32, it enters the text early. Lexicons map it across 3 senses. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2751 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.
- #1,877
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,877 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 2 verses 67%
- 1 Corinthians 1 verse 33%
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.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 67%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 33%
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 shorn 2×
- American Standard Version: Be shorn 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Have her hair cut 1×, Shaved 1×, She should have her hair cut off 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Be cut off 1×, Have her hair cut off 1×, Having shorn 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2751 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2751 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2751 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2751 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 sheer: a sheep
- to get or let be shorn
- of shearing or cutting short the hair of the head
Word origin
Origin: a primary verb
A primary verb; to shear : - shear (-er).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 4 distinct written forms G2751 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| κείραντος keírantos | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Masculine | Acts 8:32 | 1 |
| κείρασθαι keírasthai | Verb, Aorist, Middle, Infinitive | 1 Corinthians 11:6 | 1 |
| κειράμενος keirámenos | Verb, Aorist, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 18:18 | 1 |
| κειράσθω keirásthō | Verb, Aorist, Middle, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular | 1 Corinthians 11:6 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2751, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word κειρω appears 21 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 19 verses in 10 books.
- 21
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 19
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 31:19 κείρω
- Deuteronomy 15:19 κείρω
- 1 Samuel 25:2 κείρω
- 2 Samuel 13:23 κείρω
- Job 1:20 κείρω
- Proverbs 27:25 κείρω
- Song of Solomon 4:2 κείρω
- Isaiah 53:7 κείρω
- Jeremiah 7:29 κείρω
- Micah 1:16 κείρω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2751) 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.
- Genesis 31:19 κείρω Now Laban had gone to shear his sheep: and Rachel stole the teraphim that were her father's.
- Genesis 38:12 κείρω After many days, Shua's daughter, the wife of Judah, died. Judah was comforted, and went up to his sheep-shearers to Timnah, he and his friend Hirah, the Adullamite.
- Genesis 38:13 κείρω It was told Tamar, saying, "Behold, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep."
- Deuteronomy 15:19 κείρω All the firstborn males that are born of your herd and of your flock you shall sanctify to Yahweh your God: you shall do no work with the firstborn of your herd, nor shear the firstborn of your flock.
- 1 Samuel 25:2 κείρω There was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats: and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel.
- 1 Samuel 25:4 κείρω David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep.
- 1 Samuel 25:7 κείρω Now I have heard that you have shearers: your shepherds have now been with us, and we did them no hurt, neither was there anything missing to them, all the while they were in Carmel.
- 1 Samuel 25:11 κείρω Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my meat that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men who I don't know where they come from?
- 2 Samuel 13:23 κείρω It happened after two full years, that Absalom had sheep-shearers in Baal Hazor, which is beside Ephraim: and Absalom invited all the king's sons.
- 2 Samuel 13:24 κείρω Absalom came to the king, and said, See now, your servant has sheep-shearers; let the king, I pray you, and his servants go with your servant.
- 2 Samuel 14:26 κείρω When he cut the hair of his head (now it was at every year's end that he cut it; because it was heavy on him, therefore he cut it); he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels, after the king's weight.
- Job 1:20 κείρω Then Job arose, and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped.
- Proverbs 27:25 κείρω The hay is removed, and the new growth appears, The grasses of the hills are gathered in.
- Song of Solomon 4:2 κείρω Your teeth are like a newly shorn flock, Which have come up from the washing, Where every one of them has twins. None is bereaved among them.
- Song of Solomon 6:6 κείρω Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, Which have come up from the washing; Of which every one has twins; None is bereaved among them.
- Isaiah 53:7 κείρω He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn't open his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is mute, so he didn't open his mouth.
- Jeremiah 7:29 κείρω Cut off your hair, [Jerusalem], and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on the bare heights; for Yahweh has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.
- Jeremiah 30:27 κείρω
- Micah 1:16 κείρω Shave your heads, And cut off your hair for the children of your delight. Enlarge your baldness like the vulture; For they have gone into captivity from you!
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2751) 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.
