νομίζω
to hold custom
‘to hold custom’ 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
- 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.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- 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.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
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.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms 14 distinct
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (7%)
+6 more forms (6 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 15 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3543 appears — 15 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.
Matthew 3 verses
- Matthew 5:17 νομίσητε aor act subj 2pl "Don't think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but to fulfill.
- Matthew 10:34 νομίσητε aor act subj 2pl "Don't think that I came to send peace on the earth. I didn't come to send peace, but a sword.
- Matthew 20:10 ἐνόμισαν aor act ind 3pl When the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise each received a denarius.
Luke 2 verses
- Luke 2:44 νομίσαντες aor act ptcp nom pl masc but supposing him to be in the company, they went a day's journey, and they looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances.
- Luke 3:23 ἐνομίζετο impf pass ind 3sg Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli,
Acts 7 verses
- Acts 7:25 ἐνόμιζεν impf act ind 3sg He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance; but they didn't understand.
- Acts 8:20 ἐνόμισας aor act ind 2sg But Peter said to him, "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!
- Acts 14:19 νομίζοντες pres act ptcp nom pl masc But some Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there, and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul, and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.
- Acts 16:13 ἐνομίζομεν impf act ind 1pl On the Sabbath day we went forth outside of the city by a riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down, and spoke to the women who had come together.
- Acts 16:27 νομίζων pres act ptcp nom sg masc The jailer, being roused out of sleep and seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.
- Acts 17:29 νομίζειν pres act inf Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man.
- Acts 21:29 ἐνόμιζον impf act ind 3pl For they had seen Trophimus, the Ephesian, with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.
1 Corinthians 2 verses
- 1 Corinthians 7:26 νομίζω pres act ind 1sg I think that it is good therefore, because of the distress that is on us, that it is good for a man to be as he is.
- 1 Corinthians 7:36 νομίζει pres act ind 3sg But if any man thinks that he is behaving inappropriately toward his virgin, if she is past the flower of her age, and if need so requires, let him do what he desires. He doesn't sin. Let them marry.
1 Timothy 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.
The Greek verb νομιζω centers on the idea of “to hold custom.” First canonically at Matthew 5:17, it enters the text early. The Greek New Testament uses it across 15 verses — uncommon. Acts dominates its distribution — 7 of 15 verses. Lexicons map it across 2 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 G3543 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
- #768
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 768 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 15 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 15 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 9 verses · 60%
- Gospels 5 verses · 33%
- Pauline corpus 3 verses · 20%
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: Think 4×, Supposing 3×, They supposed 2×
- American Standard Version: Supposing 2×, Supposing that 2×, They supposed 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: They assumed 2×, Think 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Do 2×, Think 2×, Thinking 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3543 across 15 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 G3543 across 14 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 G3543 across 15 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3543 across 17 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.
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 hold by custom or usage, own as a custom or usage, to follow a custom or usage
- to deem, think, suppose
Word origin
Derived from νομος (nómos) (G3551) — law.
From G3551 ; properly to do by law ( usage ) that is to accustom (passively be usual ); by extension to deem or regard : - suppose think be wont.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 14 distinct written forms G3543 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 G3543, 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
- νομη nomḗ G3542 pasturage
- νομικος nomikós G3544 learned in law
- νομιμως nomímōs G3545 lawfully
- νομοδιδασκαλος nomodidáskalos G3547 law teacher
- νομοθετης nomothétēs G3550 lawgiver
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 8 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
