παίζω
to play
‘to play’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
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).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Every verse where G3815 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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.
1 Corinthians 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, παιζω (paízō) means “to play.” A scarce word — 1 verse in all of the Greek New Testament. The word gravitates to 1 Corinthians (100%). It occurs only once, in 1 Corinthians 10:7. Catalogued under 3 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Dig into 1-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3815 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
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 of 27 New Testament books.
- #3,503
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 3,503 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Corinthians 1 verse 100%
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 1 distinct verse.
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 100%
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: Play 1×
- American Standard Version: Play 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Indulge in revelry 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Play 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3815 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3815 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3815 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3815 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 3 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 play like a child
- to play, sport, jest
- to give way to hilarity, esp. by joking singing, dancing
Word origin
Derived from παις (paîs) (G3816) — child.
From G3816 ; to sport (as a boy): - play.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3815, 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
- παιδαγωγος paidagōgós G3807 tutor
- παιδαριον paidárion G3808 boy
- παιδευω paideúō G3811 to discipline
- παιδιον paidíon G3813 small child
- παιδισκη paidískē G3814 young girl
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word παιζω appears 29 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 28 verses in 13 books.
- 29
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 28
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 21:9 παίζω
- Exodus 32:6 παίζω
- Judges 16:25 παίζω
- 1 Samuel 13:4 παίζω
- 2 Samuel 2:14 παίζω
- 1 Kings 16:16 παίζω
- 2 Kings 9:15 παίζω
- 1 Chronicles 13:8 παίζω
- Job 40:29 παίζω
- Proverbs 26:19 παίζω
- Isaiah 3:16 παίζω
- Jeremiah 5:6 παίζω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3815) 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.
- Genesis 21:9 παίζω Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking.
- Genesis 26:8 παίζω It happened, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was caressing Rebekah, his wife.
- Exodus 32:6 παίζω They rose up early on the next day, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
- Judges 16:25 παίζω It happened, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. They called for Samson out of the prison-house; and he made sport before them. They set him between the pillars:
- 1 Samuel 13:4 παίζω All Israel heard say that Saul had struck the garrison of the Philistines, and also that Israel was had in abomination with the Philistines. The people were gathered together after Saul to Gilgal.
- 1 Samuel 26:10 παίζω David said, As Yahweh lives, Yahweh will strike him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall go down into battle and perish.
- 2 Samuel 2:14 παίζω Abner said to Joab, Please let the young men arise and play before us. Joab said, Let them arise.
- 2 Samuel 6:5 παίζω David and all the house of Israel played before Yahweh with all manner of [instruments made of] fir-wood, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with tambourines, and with castanets, and with cymbals.
- 2 Samuel 6:7 παίζω The anger of Yahweh was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.
- 2 Samuel 6:21 παίζω David said to Michal, [It was] before Yahweh, who chose me above your father, and above all his house, to appoint me prince over the people of Yahweh, over Israel: therefore will I play before Yahweh.
- 2 Samuel 14:6 παίζω Your handmaid had two sons, and they two strove together in the field, and there was none to part them, but the one struck the other, and killed him.
- 2 Samuel 14:7 παίζω Behold, the whole family is risen against your handmaid, and they say, Deliver him who struck his brother, that we may kill him for the life of his brother whom he killed, and so destroy the heir also. Thus will they quench my coal which is left, and will leave to my husband neither name nor remainder on the surface of the earth.
- 2 Samuel 20:10 παίζω But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's hand: so he struck him therewith in the body, and shed out his bowels to the ground, and didn't strike him again; and he died. Joab and Abishai his brother pursued after Sheba the son of Bichri.
- 1 Kings 16:16 παίζω The people who were encamped heard say, Zimri has conspired, and has also struck the king: therefore all Israel made Omri, the captain of the host, king over Israel that day in the camp.
- 2 Kings 9:15 παίζω but king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.) Jehu said, If this be your mind, then let none escape and go forth out of the city, to go to tell it in Jezreel.
- 2 Kings 25:21 παίζω The king of Babylon struck them, and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away captive out of his land.
- 1 Chronicles 13:8 παίζω David and all Israel played before God with all their might, even with songs, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with tambourines, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.
- 1 Chronicles 15:29 παίζω It happened, as the ark of the covenant of Yahweh came to the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looked out at the window, and saw king David dancing and playing; and she despised him in her heart.
- Job 40:29 παίζω
- Proverbs 26:19 παίζω Is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, "Am I not joking?"
- Isaiah 3:16 παίζω Moreover Yahweh said, "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, And walk with outstretched necks and flirting eyes, Walking to trip as they go, Jingling ornaments on their feet;
- Jeremiah 5:6 παίζω Therefore a lion out of the forest shall kill them, a wolf of the evenings shall destroy them, a leopard shall watch against their cities; everyone who goes out there shall be torn in pieces; because their transgressions are many, [and] their backsliding is increased.
- Jeremiah 14:19 παίζω Have you utterly rejected Judah? has your soul loathed Zion? why have you struck us, and there is no healing for us? We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and, behold, dismay!
- Jeremiah 15:17 παίζω I didn't sit in the assembly of those who make merry, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of your hand; for you have filled me with indignation.
- Jeremiah 37:14 παίζω Then said Jeremiah, It is false; I am not falling away to the Chaldeans. But he didn't listen to him; so Irijah laid hold on Jeremiah, and brought him to the princes.
- Jeremiah 37:19 παίζω Where now are your prophets who prophesied to you, saying, The king of Babylon shall not come against you, nor against this land?
- Jeremiah 38:4 παίζω Then the princes said to the king, Let this man, we pray you, be put to death; because he weakens the hands of the men of war who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words to them: for this man doesn't seek the welfare of this people, but the hurt.
- Zechariah 8:5 παίζω The streets of the city will be full of boys and girls playing in its streets."
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3815) 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.
