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μέγας

great

‘great’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓

G3173 Strong's Greek
mégas Transliteration
/meg'-as/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 244 appearances

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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.

μεγας (mégas) is a Greek adjective most often rendered “great.” Ranging over 4 senses, it is not a single-sense word. It turns up in 232 verses across 19 books, a common footprint. It concentrates in Revelation, which alone accounts for 32% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Matthew 2:10. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
exceedingly
Modern gloss
great
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G3173 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 →

232
distinct verses
The word appears in 232 distinct verses.
19 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 19 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 2:10
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 2:10.
Revelation 21:12
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 21:12.
#64
by frequency
Top 100 most frequent Greek words (rank 64 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 232 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 94 · 41%
  • Acts 30 · 13%
  • Pauline Epistles 13 · 6%
  • General Epistles 20 · 9%
  • Revelation 75 · 32%

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 232 distinct verses.

  • Johannine 96 verses · 41%
  • Gospels 94 verses · 41%
  • Revelation 75 verses · 32%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 61 verses · 26%
  • Pauline corpus 13 verses · 6%
  • Hebrews 10 verses · 4%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 10 verses · 4%

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: Great 141×, Loud 33×, Greatest 2×
  • American Standard Version: Great 145×, Loud 21×, Greater 10×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Great 108×, Loud 23×, Greater 21×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Great 134×, Loud 39×, Large 10×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G3173 across 193 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Great” 141×
  • “Loud” 33×
  • “Greatest” 2×
  • “Large” 2×

Plus 15 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.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G3173 across 207 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Great” 145×
  • “Loud” 21×
  • “Greater” 10×
  • “Were a great” 3×
  • “Is greater” 2×
  • “Large” 2×

Plus 24 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 G3173 across 218 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Great” 108×
  • “Loud” 23×
  • “Greater” 21×
  • “Greatest” 14×
  • “Large” 8×
  • “Greater than” 7×
  • “Great things” 2×
  • “High” 2×
  • “Largest” 2×
  • “Perfectly” 2×
  • “Strong” 2×
  • “Superiors” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 23 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 6 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G3173 across 198 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Great” 134×
  • “Loud” 39×
  • “Large” 10×
  • “Great ones” 2×
  • “Is” 2×
  • “Things” 2×

Plus 9 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 4 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.

  1. great
  2. predicated of rank, as belonging to
  3. splendid, prepared on a grand scale, stately
  4. great things

Word origin

Derived from μεγιστος (mégistos) (G3176) — greatest.

Part of speech: Adjective TDNT: 12:49,6

Including the prolonged forms femine μεγάλη megalē plural μέγάλοι megaloi etc.; compare also G3176 G3187 ] big (literally or figuratively in a very wide application): - (+ fear) exceedingly great (-est) high large loud mighty + (be) sore (afraid) strong X to years.

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 27 distinct written forms G3173 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
μεγάλη megálē Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 7:27 35
μεγάλῃ megálē Adjective, Dative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 27:46 34
μείζων meízōn Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine, Comparative Matthew 11:11 26
μέγας mégas Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 5:19 26
μεγάλην megálēn Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 2:10 20
μέγα méga Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Matthew 4:16 18
μεγάλης megálēs Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Feminine Matthew 24:31 15
μέγαν mégan Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 27:60 13
μεγάλα megála Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Neuter Matthew 24:24 8
μείζονα meízona Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Neuter, Comparative John 5:20 7
μεγάλου megálou Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Masculine Matthew 5:35 7
μεῖζον meîzon Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Neuter, Comparative Matthew 13:32 5
μεγάλῳ megálō Adjective, Dative, Singular, Masculine Luke 4:38 5
μεγάλοι megáloi Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 20:25 4
μείζονος meízonos Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Masculine, Comparative Hebrews 6:13 3
μεγάλους megálous Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Mark 4:32 3
μείζω meízō Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Neuter, Comparative John 1:51 2
μεγάλας megálas Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Feminine Mark 13:2 2
μεγάλων megálōn Adjective, Genitive, Plural, Masculine John 21:11 2
μεῖζόν meîzón Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Neuter, Comparative Matthew 12:6 2
μέγιστα mégista Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Neuter, Superlative 2 Peter 1:4 1
μείζονας meízonas Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Feminine, Comparative Luke 12:18 1
μείζονες meízones Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Masculine, Comparative 2 Peter 2:11 1
μεγάλαι megálai Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Feminine Revelation 11:15 1
μεγάλαις megálais Adjective, Dative, Plural, Feminine Luke 23:23 1
μεγάλοις megálois Adjective, Dative, Plural, Masculine Revelation 11:18 1
μειζοτέραν meizotéran Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Feminine, Comparative 3 John 1:4 1

Same root — word family


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word μεγας appears 602 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 569 verses in 32 books.

602
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
569
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
32 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 32 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3173) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 569. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3173) 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.