νικάω
to conquer
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Present-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).
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms 16 distinct
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 8 times (29%)
- Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural 3 times (11%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular 2 times (7%)
- Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 2 times (7%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Dative, Singular, Masculine 2 times (7%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 time (4%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (4%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (4%)
+8 more forms (8 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 28 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3528 appears — 24 distinct verses across 5 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.
Luke 1 verse
John 1 verse
Romans 2 verses
- Romans 3:4 νικήσεις fut act ind 2sg May it never be! Yes, let God be found true, but every man a liar. As it is written, "That you might be justified in your words, And might prevail when you come into judgment."
- Romans 12:21 νικῶ νίκα pres pass impv 2sg pres act impv 2sg Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
1 John 5 verses
- 1 John 2:13 νενικήκατε perf act ind 2pl I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, little children, because you know the Father.
- 1 John 2:14 νενικήκατε perf act ind 2pl I have written to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God remains in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
- 1 John 4:4 νενικήκατε perf act ind 2pl You are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.
- 1 John 5:4 νικᾷ νικήσασα pres act ind 3sg aor act ptcp nom sg fem For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith.
- 1 John 5:5 νικῶν pres act ptcp nom sg masc Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Revelation 15 verses
- Revelation 2:7 νικῶντι pres act ptcp dat sg masc He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. To him who overcomes I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of my God.
- Revelation 2:11 νικῶν pres act ptcp nom sg masc He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. He who overcomes won't be harmed by the second death.
- Revelation 2:17 νικοῦντι pres act ptcp dat sg masc He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. To him who overcomes, to him I will give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which no one knows but he who receives it.
- Revelation 2:26 νικῶν pres act ptcp nom sg masc He who overcomes, and he who keeps my works to the end, to him I will give authority over the nations.
- Revelation 3:5 νικῶν pres act ptcp nom sg masc He who overcomes will be arrayed in white garments, and I will in no way blot his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
- Revelation 3:12 νικῶν pres act ptcp nom sg masc He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will go out from there no more. I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and my own new name.
- Revelation 3:21 νικῶν ἐνίκησα pres act ptcp nom sg masc aor act ind 1sg He who overcomes, I will give to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father on his throne.
- Revelation 5:5 ἐνίκησεν aor act ind 3sg One of the elders said to me, "Don't weep. Behold, the Lion who is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome; he who opens the book and its seven seals."
- Revelation 6:2 νικῶν νικήσῃ pres act ptcp nom sg masc aor act subj 3sg And behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow. A crown was given to him, and he came forth conquering, and to conquer.
- Revelation 11:7 νικήσει fut act ind 3sg When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them.
- Revelation 12:11 ἐνίκησαν aor act ind 3pl They overcame him because of the Lamb's blood, and because of the word of their testimony. They didn't love their life, even to death.
- Revelation 13:7 νικῆσαι aor act inf It was given to him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them. Authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation was given to him.
- Revelation 15:2 νικῶντας pres act ptcp acc pl masc I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who overcame the beast, his image, and the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God.
- Revelation 17:14 νικήσει fut act ind 3sg These will war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings. They also will overcome who are with him, called and chosen and faithful."
- Revelation 21:7 νικῶν pres act ptcp nom sg masc He who overcomes, I will give him these things. I will be his God, and he will be my son.
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.
νικαω — transliterated nikáō — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to conquer.” Its uses cluster heavily in Revelation (63% of all occurrences). With 24 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. It first appears in Luke 11:22. Translators differ — “overcometh” in the King James Version, then “overcomes” (Berean Standard Bible) and “one conquering” (unfoldingWord Literal Text), as the renderings breakdown shows. See the sense tree, 24-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3528 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 →
- 24
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 24 distinct verses.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
- #485
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 485 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 24 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 15 verses 63%
- 1 John 5 verses 21%
- Romans 2 verses 8%
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 24 distinct verses.
- Johannine 21 verses · 88%
- Revelation 15 verses · 63%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 5 verses · 21%
- Gospels 2 verses · 8%
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 8%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 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: Overcometh 6×, He that overcometh 5×, Overcome 4×
- American Standard Version: Overcometh 6×, Overcome 5×, He that overcometh 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Overcomes 10×, Conquer 2×, Have overcome 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: One conquering 8×, Have conquered 2×, You have triumphed over 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3528 across 29 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3528 across 29 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3528 across 28 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3528 across 29 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 17 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.
- to carry off the victory, come off victorious
Word origin
Derived from νικη (níkē) (G3529) — victory.
From G3529 ; to subdue (literally or figuratively): - conquer overcome prevail get the victory.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 17 distinct written forms G3528 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 G3528, 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 5 — 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 νικαω appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 3 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Psalms 50:6 νικάω
- Proverbs 6:25 νικάω
- Habakkuk 3:19 νικάω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3528) 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.
- Psalms 50:6 νικάω The heavens shall declare his righteousness, For God himself is judge. Selah.
- Proverbs 6:25 νικάω Don't lust after her beauty in your heart, Neither let her captivate you with her eyelids.
- Habakkuk 3:19 νικάω Yahweh, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like deer's feet, And enables me to go in high places. For the music director, on my stringed instruments.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3528) 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.
