κοσμέω
to arrange
‘to arrange’ 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
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
- 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).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
1 verse where G2885 appears in the Perfect tense in the Book of Matthew. Filtered view — show all forms. 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
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.
κοσμεω — transliterated kosméō — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to arrange.” Debuting at Matthew 12:44, it then recurs through the corpus. Spanning 10 verses in 6 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Matthew (30% of all occurrences). Its lexical range runs to 3 senses. 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 G2885 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,056
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,056 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Matthew 3 verses 30%
- Luke 2 verses 20%
- Revelation 2 verses 20%
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 10 distinct verses.
- Gospels 5 verses · 50%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 20%
- Johannine 2 verses · 20%
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 20%
- Revelation 2 verses · 20%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 10%
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: Adorned 2×, Garnished 2×
- American Standard Version: Adorned 2×, Garnished 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Adorned 2×, Put in order 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Adorned 2×, Put in order 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2885 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 G2885 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 G2885 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2885 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 put in order, arrange, make ready, prepare
- to ornament, adore
- metaph. to embellish with honour, gain honour
Word origin
Derived from κοσμος (kósmos) (G2889) — world.
From G2889 ; to put in proper order that is decorate (literally or figuratively); specifically to snuff (a wick): - adorn garnish trim.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 9 distinct written forms G2885 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| κεκοσμημένον kekosmēménon | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 12:44 | 2 |
| κεκοσμημένην kekosmēménēn | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Revelation 21:2 | 1 |
| κεκοσμημένοι kekosmēménoi | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Revelation 21:19 | 1 |
| κεκόσμηται kekósmētai | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 21:5 | 1 |
| κοσμεῖν kosmeîn | Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive | 1 Timothy 2:9 | 1 |
| κοσμεῖτε kosmeîte | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural | Matthew 23:29 | 1 |
| κοσμῶσιν kosmō̂sin | Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural | Titus 2:10 | 1 |
| ἐκόσμησαν ekósmēsan | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Matthew 25:7 | 1 |
| ἐκόσμουν ekósmoun | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | 1 Peter 3:5 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2885, 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
- κοσμικος kosmikós G2886 worldly
- κοσμιος kósmios G2887 well-arranged
- κοσμοκρατωρ kosmokrátōr G2888 worldly ruler
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word κοσμεω appears 8 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 8 verses in 6 books.
- 8
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 8
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- 2 Chronicles 3:6 κοσμέω
- Esther 1:6 κοσμέω
- Ecclesiastes 7:13 κοσμέω
- Jeremiah 4:30 κοσμέω
- Ezekiel 16:11 κοσμέω
- Micah 6:9 κοσμέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2885) 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.
- 2 Chronicles 3:6 κοσμέω He garnished the house with precious stones for beauty: and the gold was gold of Parvaim.
- Esther 1:6 κοσμέω [There were hangings of] white [cloth], [of] green, and [of] blue, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble: the couches were of gold and silver, on a pavement of red, and white, and yellow, and black marble.
- Ecclesiastes 7:13 κοσμέω Consider the work of God, for who can make that straight, which he has made crooked?
- Jeremiah 4:30 κοσμέω You, when you are made desolate, what will you do? Though you clothe yourself with scarlet, though you deck you with ornaments of gold, though you enlarge your eyes with paint, in vain do you make yourself beautiful; [your] lovers despise you, they seek your life.
- Ezekiel 16:11 κοσμέω I decked you with ornaments, and I put bracelets on your hands, and a chain on your neck.
- Ezekiel 16:13 κοσμέω Thus was you decked with gold and silver; and your clothing was of fine linen, and silk, and embroidered work; you ate fine flour, and honey, and oil; and you were exceeding beautiful, and you did prosper to royal estate.
- Ezekiel 23:41 κοσμέω and sit on a stately bed, with a table prepared before it, whereupon you did set my incense and my oil.
- Micah 6:9 κοσμέω Yahweh's voice calls to the city, And wisdom sees your name: "Listen to the rod, And he who appointed it.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2885) 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.
