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ος

who

G3739 Strong's Greek
hós Transliteration
/hos/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 1,406 appearances

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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, ος (hós) means “who.” Scripture first uses it in Matthew 1:16. It appears 1,225 verses across 27 books of the Greek New Testament, among its most common vocabulary. It clusters with ο, τανυν and οδε under a shared root. Dig into 1,225-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
one
Modern gloss
who
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G3739 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 →

1,225
distinct verses
The word appears in 1,225 distinct verses.
27 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 27 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 1:16
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 1:16.
Revelation 22:6
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 22:6.
#12
by frequency
Top 25 most frequent Greek words (rank 12 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 1,225 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

  • Acts 200 verses 16%
  • Luke 162 verses 13%
  • John 142 verses 12%

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 480 · 39%
  • Acts 200 · 16%
  • Pauline Epistles 331 · 27%
  • General Epistles 150 · 12%
  • Revelation 64 · 5%

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 1,225 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 480 verses · 39%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 362 verses · 30%
  • Pauline corpus 331 verses · 27%
  • Johannine 235 verses · 19%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 81 verses · 7%
  • Hebrews 69 verses · 6%
  • Revelation 64 verses · 5%

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: Which 394×, Whom 256×, That 126×
  • American Standard Version: Which 325×, Whom 247×, That 139×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Whom 124×, Which 116×, What 114×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Which 272×, Whom 262×, That 227×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G3739 across 1,256 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Which” 394×
  • “Whom” 256×
  • “That” 126×
  • “Who” 85×
  • “Whose” 51×
  • “Whosoever” 50×
  • “What” 40×
  • “Things which” 31×
  • “Whatsoever” 24×
  • “Some” 14×
  • “Whereof” 12×
  • “Things” 11×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 47 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 147 further occurrences.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G3739 across 1,259 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Which” 325×
  • “Whom” 247×
  • “That” 139×
  • “Who” 124×
  • “Whose” 43×
  • “What” 42×
  • “Things which” 26×
  • “Whosoever” 24×
  • “Things” 16×
  • “Whereof” 13×
  • “Some” 12×
  • “It” 9×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 91 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 3 further occurrences.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders G3739 across 866 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Whom” 124×
  • “Which” 116×
  • “What” 114×
  • “Who” 97×
  • “That” 87×
  • “Whoever” 37×
  • “The” 24×
  • “Whose” 24×
  • “Whatever” 21×
  • “Anyone” 19×
  • “One” 16×
  • “This” 12×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 50 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 496 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G3739 across 1,431 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Which” 272×
  • “Whom” 262×
  • “That” 227×
  • “Who” 160×
  • “What” 141×
  • “Whoever” 62×
  • “Whose” 34×
  • “Whatever” 32×
  • “One” 23×
  • “Until” 23×
  • “Some” 15×
  • “Things” 15×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 25 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.

  1. who, which, what, that Wigram's count is 1309 not 1393.

Word origin

Derived from ο (ho) (G3588).

Probably a primary word (or perhaps a form of the article G3588 ); the relative (sometimes demonstrative) pronoun who which what that : - one (an- the) other some that what which who (-m -se) etc. See also G3757 .

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 25 distinct written forms G3739 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ὃ hò Relative pronoun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Matthew 8:4 208
ὃς hòs Relative pronoun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 5:19 198
ὃν hòn Relative pronoun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 2:9 166
ᾧ hō̂ Relative pronoun, Dative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 3:17 121
οὗ hoû Relative pronoun, Genitive, Singular, Masculine Matthew 1:25 116
ἃ hà Relative pronoun, Accusative, Plural, Neuter Matthew 11:4 112
ἣν hḕn Relative pronoun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 10:11 95
ὧν hō̂n Relative pronoun, Genitive, Plural, Neuter Matthew 6:8 78
οὓς hoùs Relative pronoun, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Mark 2:26 51
ἧς hē̂s Relative pronoun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine Matthew 1:16 49
οἷς hoîs Relative pronoun, Dative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 19:11 46
ὅ hó Relative pronoun, Nominative, Singular, Neuter Matthew 1:23 38
ᾗ hē̂ Relative pronoun, Dative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 24:44 38
οἳ hoì Relative pronoun, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Mark 4:16 32
ὅς hós Relative pronoun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Luke 2:11 20
αἷς haîs Relative pronoun, Dative, Plural, Feminine Matthew 11:20 15
ἅ há Relative pronoun, Nominative, Plural, Neuter Colossians 2:17 6
αἳ haì Relative pronoun, Nominative, Plural, Feminine Mark 15:41 4
ἣ hḕ Relative pronoun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Luke 2:37 4
ἥν hḗn Relative pronoun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine Galatians 1:23 3
οἵ hoí Relative pronoun, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 Peter 2:10 2
αἵ haí Relative pronoun, Nominative, Plural, Feminine Revelation 5:8 1
ἃς hàs Relative pronoun, Accusative, Plural, Feminine 2 Thessalonians 2:15 1
Ὃ Hò Relative pronoun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter 1 John 1:1 1
ᾧν hō̂n Relative pronoun, Genitive, Plural, Neuter Luke 15:16 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3739, 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

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 31 — 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 ος appears 3,959 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3,406 verses in 38 books.

3,959
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
3,406
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
38 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 38 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3739) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 3,406. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3739) 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.