νοιέω
to understand
‘to understand’ 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 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).
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural 5 times (36%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 2 times (14%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular 2 times (14%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Neuter 1 time (7%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 14 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3539 appears — 14 distinct verses across 8 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.
Matthew 4 verses
- Matthew 15:17 νοεῖτε pres act ind 2pl Don't you understand that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the belly, and then out of the body?
- Matthew 16:9 νοεῖτε pres act ind 2pl Don't you yet perceive, neither remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you took up?
- Matthew 16:11 νοεῖτε pres act ind 2pl How is it that you don't perceive that I didn't speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees."
- Matthew 24:15 νοείτω pres act impv 3sg "When, therefore, you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),
Mark 3 verses
- Mark 7:18 νοεῖτε pres act ind 2pl He said to them, "Are you thus without understanding also? Don't you perceive that whatever goes into the man from outside can't defile him,
- Mark 8:17 νοεῖτε pres act ind 2pl Jesus, perceiving it, said to them, "Why do you reason that it's because you have no bread? Don't you perceive yet, neither understand? Is your heart still hardened?
- Mark 13:14 νοείτω pres act impv 3sg But when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains,
John 1 verse
Romans 1 verse
Ephesians 2 verses
1 Timothy 1 verse
2 Timothy 1 verse
Hebrews 1 verse
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.
At its core, νοιεω (noiéō) means “to understand.” Translators differ — “understand” in the King James Version, then “do you” (unfoldingWord Literal Text), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 14 verses in 8 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Matthew (29% of all occurrences). Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Dig into 14-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3539 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 →
- 14
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 14 distinct verses.
- 8 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 8 of 27 New Testament books.
- #814
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 814 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 14 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 14 distinct verses.
- Gospels 8 verses · 57%
- Pauline corpus 5 verses · 36%
- Johannine 1 verse · 7%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 7%
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: Understand 6×, Do ye 2×
- American Standard Version: Perceive 6×, Do ye 2×, Understand 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Understand 4×, Do you not understand 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Do you 5×, Understand 5×, Perceive 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3539 across 19 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 G3539 across 18 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 G3539 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 G3539 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 perceive with the mind, to understand, to have understanding
- to think upon, heed, ponder, consider
Word origin
Derived from νους (noûs) (G3563) — mind.
From G3563 ; to exercise the mind ( observe ) that is (figuratively) to comprehend heed : - consider perceive think understand.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms G3539 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| νοεῖτε noeîte | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural | Matthew 15:17 | 5 |
| νοείτω noeítō | Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular | Matthew 24:15 | 2 |
| νοοῦμεν nooûmen | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural | Ephesians 3:20 | 2 |
| νοήσωσιν noḗsōsin | Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural | John 12:40 | 1 |
| νοούμενα nooúmena | Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Neuter | Romans 1:20 | 1 |
| νοοῦντες nooûntes | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | 1 Timothy 1:7 | 1 |
| νοῆσαι noē̂sai | Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive | Ephesians 3:4 | 1 |
| νόει nóei | Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular | 2 Timothy 2:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3539, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
