ξενίζω
to entertain
‘to entertain’ 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
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
- 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”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G3579 appears in the Book of Acts — 7 distinct verses. 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
- Acts 10:6 ξενίζεται pres pass ind 3sg He lodges with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside."
- Acts 10:18 ξενίζεται pres pass ind 3sg and called and asked whether Simon, who was surnamed Peter, was lodging there.
- Acts 10:23 ἐξένισεν aor act ind 3sg So he called them in and lodged them. On the next day Peter arose and went out with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him.
- Acts 10:32 ξενίζεται pres pass ind 3sg Send therefore to Joppa, and summon Simon, who is surnamed Peter. He lodges in the house of Simon a tanner, by the seaside. When he comes, he will speak to you.'
- Acts 17:20 ξενίζοντα pres act ptcp acc pl neut For you bring certain strange things to our ears. We want to know therefore what these things mean."
- Acts 21:16 ξενισθῶμεν aor pass subj 1pl Some of the disciples from Caesarea also went with us, bringing one Mnason of Cyprus, an early disciple, with whom we would stay.
- Acts 28:7 ἐξένισεν aor act ind 3sg Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island, named Publius, who received us, and courteously entertained us for three days.
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, ξενιζω (xenízō) means “to entertain.” Its uses cluster heavily in Acts (70% of all occurrences). With 10 verses in 3 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Scripture first uses it in Acts 10:6. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Dig into 10-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3579 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,056
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,056 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 10 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 10 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 7 verses · 70%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 2 verses · 20%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 10%
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: Have entertained 1×, Is lodged 1×, Lodged 1×
- American Standard Version: Lodgeth 2×, Strange 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Be surprised at 1×, Entertained 1×, Guests 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Is being hosted 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3579 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3579 across 11 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3579 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3579 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 receive as a guest, to entertain, hospitably
- to surprise or astonish by the strangeness and novelty of a thing
Word origin
Derived from ξενος (xénos) (G3581) — stranger.
From G3581 ; to be a host (passively a guest ); by implication be ( make appear ) strange : - entertain lodge (think it) strange.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 7 distinct written forms G3579 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ξενίζεται xenízetai | Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 10:6 | 3 |
| ἐξένισεν exénisen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 10:23 | 2 |
| ξενίζεσθε xenízesthe | Verb, Present, Passive, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural | 1 Peter 4:12 | 1 |
| ξενίζοντα xenízonta | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Neuter | Acts 17:20 | 1 |
| ξενίζονται xenízontai | Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | 1 Peter 4:4 | 1 |
| ξενίσαντες xenísantes | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Hebrews 13:2 | 1 |
| ξενισθῶμεν xenisthō̂men | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural | Acts 21:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3579, 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.
