λύκος
wolf
‘wolf’ is one of 2 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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where G3074 appears in the Book of Luke — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Luke
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.
λυκος (lýkos) is a Greek noun most often rendered “wolf.” It occurs a mere 5 verses across Scripture. Matthew dominates its distribution — 2 of 5 verses. It first appears in Matthew 7:15. Its lexical range runs to 2 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 G3074 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,476
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,476 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Gospels 4 verses · 80%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 40%
- Johannine 1 verse · 20%
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: Wolves 4×, Wolf 2×
- American Standard Version: Wolves 4×, Wolf 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Wolves 4×, Wolf 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Wolves 4×, Wolf 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3074 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3074 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3074 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3074 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- a wolf
- metaph. of cruel, greedy, rapacious, destructive men
Word origin
Derived from λευκος (leukós) (G3022) — white.
Perhaps akin to the base of G3022 (from the whitish hair); a wolf : - wolf.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 4 distinct written forms G3074 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| λύκοι lýkoi | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 7:15 | 2 |
| λύκων lýkōn | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 10:16 | 2 |
| λύκον lýkon | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | John 10:12 | 1 |
| λύκος lýkos | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | John 10:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3074, 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
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 6 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word λυκος appears 8 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 8 verses in 7 books.
- 8
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 8
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 49:27 λύκος
- Proverbs 28:15 λύκος
- Isaiah 11:6 λύκος
- Jeremiah 5:6 λύκος
- Ezekiel 22:27 λύκος
- Habakkuk 1:8 λύκος
- Zephaniah 3:3 λύκος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3074) 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 49:27 λύκος "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. In the morning he will devour the prey. At evening he will divide the spoil."
- Proverbs 28:15 λύκος As a roaring lion or a charging bear, So is a wicked ruler over helpless people.
- Isaiah 11:6 λύκος The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
- Isaiah 65:25 λύκος The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 5:6 λύκος Therefore a lion out of the forest shall kill them, a wolf of the evenings shall destroy them, a leopard shall watch against their cities; everyone who goes out there shall be torn in pieces; because their transgressions are many, [and] their backsliding is increased.
- Ezekiel 22:27 λύκος Her princes in the midst of it are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, [and] to destroy souls, that they may get dishonest gain.
- Habakkuk 1:8 λύκος Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour.
- Zephaniah 3:3 λύκος Her princes in the midst of her are roaring lions. Her judges are evening wolves. They leave nothing until the next day.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3074) 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.
