μεταλαμβάνω
to partake
‘to partake’ 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
- 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
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive 3 times (43%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive 1 time (14%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 7 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3335 appears — 7 distinct verses across 3 books. 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.
Acts 4 verses
- Acts 2:46 μετελάμβανον impf act ind 3pl Day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart,
- Acts 24:25 μεταλαβὼν aor act ptcp nom sg masc As he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified, and answered, "Go your way for this time, and when it is convenient for me, I will summon you."
- Acts 27:33 μεταλαβεῖν aor act inf While the day was coming on, Paul begged them all to take some food, saying, "This day is the fourteenth day that you wait and continue fasting, having taken nothing.
- Acts 27:34 μεταλαβεῖν aor act inf Therefore I beg you to take some food, for this is for your safety; for not a hair will perish from any of your heads."
2 Timothy 1 verse
Hebrews 2 verses
- Hebrews 6:7 μεταλαμβάνει pres act ind 3sg For the land which has drunk the rain that comes often on it, and brings forth a crop suitable for them for whose sake it is also tilled, receives blessing from God;
- Hebrews 12:10 μεταλαβεῖν aor act inf For they indeed, for a few days, punished us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.
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.
μεταλαμβανω (metalambánō) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to partake.” It clusters heavily in Acts, which alone accounts for 57% of its uses. It turns up in 7 verses across 3 books, an uncommon footprint. It first appears in Acts 2:46. Its lexical range runs to 3 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 G3335 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,358
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,358 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 7 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 7 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 4 verses · 57%
- Hebrews 2 verses · 29%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 14%
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: Did eat 1×, Partaker 1×, Receiveth 1×
- American Standard Version: A 1×, Be 1×, Partake 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Eat 1×, Eat something 1×, I find 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Take 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3335 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3335 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3335 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3335 across 8 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.
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 be or to be made a partner
- to partake of, take [some] food
- of a thing, to get, find (a whole)
Word origin
Derived from μετα (metá) (G3326) — with.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G3335 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| μεταλαβεῖν metalabeîn | Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive | Acts 27:33 | 3 |
| μεταλαβὼν metalabṑn | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 24:25 | 1 |
| μεταλαμβάνει metalambánei | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Hebrews 6:7 | 1 |
| μεταλαμβάνειν metalambánein | Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive | 2 Timothy 2:6 | 1 |
| μετελάμβανον metelámbanon | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Acts 2:46 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3335, 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
- μεθερμηνευω methermēneúō G3177 to interpret
- μεθιστημι methístēmi G3179 to transfer
- μεθοδεια methodeía G3180 deceit
- μεθοριος methórios G3181 border
- μεσος mésos G3319 middle
- μεταβαινω metabaínō G3327 to pass over
- μεταβαλλω metabállō G3328 to turn around
- μεταγω metágō G3329 to transfer
- μεταδιδωμι metadídōmi G3330 to impart
- μεταιρω metaírō G3332 to remove
- μετακαλεω metakaléō G3333 to summon
- μετακινεω metakinéō G3334 to move away
- μεταλλασσω metallássō G3337 to exchange
- μεταμελλομαι metaméllomai G3338 it is a care
- μεταμορφοω metamorphóō G3339 to transform
- μετανοεω metanoéō G3340 to repent
- μεταξυ metaxý G3342 between
- μεταπεμπω metapémpō G3343 to send for
- μεταστρεφω metastréphō G3344 to turn around
- μετασχηματιζω metaschēmatízō G3345 to transform
- μετατιθημι metatíthēmi G3346 to transpose
- μετεπειτα metépeita G3347 afterwards
- μετεχω metéchō G3348 to partake
- μετεωριζω meteōrízō G3349 to be puffed up
+2 more words share this root (not shown).
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 29 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
