μέλλω
to be about
‘to be about’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Future-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
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
1 verse where G3195 appears in the Present tense in the Book of 2 Peter. 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.
2 Peter
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 μελλω centers on the idea of “to be about.” The King James Version usually renders it “shall,” while modern versions prefer “will” (Berean Standard Bible) and “being about” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. Spanning 107 verses in 18 books, it ranks among the common words of the Greek New Testament. Acts dominates its distribution — 33 of 107 verses. Thayer's distinguishes 2 senses for it. Dig into 107-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3195 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 →
- 107
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 107 distinct verses.
- 18 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 18 of 27 New Testament books.
- #150
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 150 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 107 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 33 verses 31%
- Luke 12 verses 11%
- Revelation 12 verses 11%
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 107 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 45 verses · 42%
- Gospels 34 verses · 32%
- Johannine 23 verses · 21%
- Pauline corpus 14 verses · 13%
- Revelation 12 verses · 11%
- Hebrews 10 verses · 9%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 4 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: Shall 15×, Should 13×, Come 8×
- American Standard Version: Shall 13×, Come 8×, Should 8×
- Berean Standard Bible: Will 10×, Come 7×, Is about 7×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Being about 12×, Is about 12×, Coming 9×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3195 across 107 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 43 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 3 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3195 across 107 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 43 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 G3195 across 101 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 30 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 G3195 across 115 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
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.
- to be on the point of doing or suffering something
- to intend, have in mind, think to
Word origin
Derived from μελω (mélō) (G3199) — to care about.
A strengthened form of G3199 (through the idea of expectation ); to intend that is be about to be do or suffer something (of persons or things especially events; in the sense of purpose duty necessity probability possibility or hesitation ): - about after that be (almost) (that which is things + which was for) to come intend was to (be) mean mind be at the point (be) ready + return shall (begin) (which that) should (after afterwards hereafter) tarry which was for will would be yet.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 24 distinct written forms G3195 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3195, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word μελλω appears 14 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 14 verses in 7 books.
- 14
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 14
- 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 25:22 μέλλω
- Exodus 4:12 μέλλω
- Job 3:8 μέλλω
- Psalms 64:1 μέλλω
- Proverbs 15:18 μέλλω
- Isaiah 15:7 μέλλω
- Jeremiah 36:10 μέλλω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3195) 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 25:22 μέλλω The children struggled together within her. She said, "If it be so, why do I live?" She went to inquire of Yahweh.
- Genesis 43:25 μέλλω They made ready the present for Joseph's coming at noon, for they heard that they should eat bread there.
- Exodus 4:12 μέλλω Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak."
- Job 3:8 μέλλω Let them curse it who curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
- Job 19:25 μέλλω But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth.
- Job 26:2 μέλλω "How have you helped him who is without power! How have you saved the arm that has no strength!
- Psalms 64:1 μέλλω Hear my voice, God, in my complaint. Preserve my life from fear of the enemy.
- Proverbs 15:18 μέλλω A wrathful man stirs up contention, But one who is slow to anger appeases strife.
- Isaiah 15:7 μέλλω Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have laid up, shall they carry away over the brook of the willows.
- Isaiah 28:24 μέλλω Does he who plows to sow plow continually? does he [continually] open and harrow his ground?
- Isaiah 47:13 μέλλω You are wearied in the multitude of your counsels: let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save you from the things that shall come on you.
- Isaiah 48:6 μέλλω You have heard it; see all this; and you, will you not declare it? I have shown you new things from this time, even hidden things, which you have not known.
- Isaiah 59:5 μέλλω They hatch adders' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he who eats of their eggs dies; and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper.
- Jeremiah 36:10 μέλλω Then read Baruch in the book the words of Jeremiah in the house of Yahweh, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan, the scribe, in the upper court, at the entry of the new gate of Yahweh's house, in the ears of all the people.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3195) 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.
