κωφός
dull
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Nominative-case word in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
7 distinct verses where G2974 appears in the Nominative case, across 3 books. 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 3 verses
- Matthew 9:33 κωφός adj nom sg masc When the demon was cast out, the mute man spoke. The multitudes marveled, saying, "Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel!"
- Matthew 11:5 κωφοὶ adj nom pl masc the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.
- Matthew 12:22 κωφός κωφὸν adj nom sg masc adj acc sg masc Then one possessed by a demon, blind and mute, was brought to him and he healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw.
Mark 1 verse
Luke 3 verses
- Luke 1:22 κωφός adj nom sg masc When he came out, he could not speak to them, and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple. He continued making signs to them, and remained mute.
- Luke 7:22 κωφοὶ adj nom pl masc Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John the things which you have seen and heard: that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.
- Luke 11:14 κωφόν κωφός adj nom sg neut adj nom sg masc He was casting out a demon, and it was mute. It happened, when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke; and the multitudes marveled.
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 adjective κωφος centers on the idea of “dull.” Matthew dominates its distribution — 6 of 12 verses. Spanning 12 verses in 3 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Greek New Testament. Debuting at Matthew 9:32, it then recurs through the corpus. The King James Version usually renders it “dumb,” while modern versions prefer “mute” (Berean Standard Bible) — see the renderings breakdown. 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 G2974 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #814
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 814 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 12 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 12 distinct verses.
- Gospels 12 verses · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 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: Dumb 8×, Deaf 4×
- American Standard Version: Dumb 8×, Deaf 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Mute 5×, Deaf 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Mute 7×, Deaf 4×, Man 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2974 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 G2974 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2974 across 12 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2974 across 16 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.
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.
- blunted, dull
Word origin
Derived from κοπτω (kóptō) (G2875) — to strike.
From G2875 ; blunted that is (figuratively) of hearing ( deaf ) or speech ( dumb ): - deaf dumb speechless.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G2974 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| κωφὸν kōphòn | Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 9:32 | 4 |
| κωφός kōphós | Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 9:33 | 4 |
| κωφοὶ kōphoì | Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 11:5 | 2 |
| κωφοὺς kōphoùs | Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 15:31 | 2 |
| κωφούς kōphoús | Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 15:30 | 1 |
| κωφόν kōphón | Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Neuter | Luke 11:14 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2974, 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
- κοπετος kopetós G2870 lamentation
- κοπη kopḗ G2871 cutting
- κοπος kópos G2873 beating
- κοπρια kopría G2874 dung
- τομωτερος tomṓteros G5114 sharper
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word κωφος appears 11 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 11 verses in 5 books.
- 11
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 11
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 4:11 κωφός
- Leviticus 19:14 κωφός
- Psalms 37:14 κωφός
- Isaiah 29:18 κωφός
- Habakkuk 2:18 κωφός
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2974) 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.
- Exodus 4:11 κωφός Yahweh said to him, "Who made man's mouth? Or who makes one mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Isn't it I, Yahweh?
- Leviticus 19:14 κωφός "'You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind; but you shall fear your God. I am Yahweh.
- Psalms 37:14 κωφός The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, To cast down the poor and needy, To kill those who are upright in the way.
- Psalms 57:5 κωφός Be exalted, God, above the heavens! Let your glory be above all the earth!
- Isaiah 29:18 κωφός In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.
- Isaiah 35:5 κωφός Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
- Isaiah 42:18 κωφός Hear, you deaf; and look, you blind, that you may see.
- Isaiah 42:19 κωφός Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger whom I send? Who is blind as he who is at peace, and blind as Yahweh's servant?
- Isaiah 43:8 κωφός Bring forth the blind people who have eyes, and the deaf who have ears.
- Isaiah 44:11 κωφός Behold, all his fellows shall be disappointed; and the workmen, they are of men: let them all be gathered together, let them stand up; they shall fear, they shall be put to shame together.
- Habakkuk 2:18 κωφός "What value does the engraved image have, that its maker has engraved it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he who fashions its form trusts in it, to make mute idols?
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2974) 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.
