παραιτέομαι
to beg pardon
‘to beg pardon’ 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).
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
- 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”).
Voice
- Middle or Passive deponent
- Middle/passive in form but active in meaning.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
- Middle deponent
- Middle in form but active in meaning.
Mood
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
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
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular 4 times (33%)
- Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine 2 times (17%)
- Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Infinitive 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 12 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3868 appears — 10 distinct verses across 7 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.
Mark 1 verse
Luke 2 verses
- Luke 14:18 παραιτεῖσθαι παρῃτημένον pres mid/pass.dep inf perf pass ptcp acc sg masc They all as one began to make excuses. "The first said to him, 'I have bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please have me excused.'
- Luke 14:19 παρῃτημένον perf pass ptcp acc sg masc "Another said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must go try them out. Please have me excused.'
Acts 1 verse
1 Timothy 2 verses
2 Timothy 1 verse
Titus 1 verse
Hebrews 2 verses
- Hebrews 12:19 παρῃτήσαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them,
- Hebrews 12:25 παραιτήσησθε παραιτησάμενοι aor mid.dep subj 2pl aor mid.dep ptcp nom pl masc See that you don't refuse him who speaks. For if they didn't escape when they refused him who warned on the Earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven,
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.
“to beg pardon” is the headline sense of the Greek verb παραιτεομαι (paraitéomai). First canonically at Mark 15:6, it enters the text early. It appears 10 verses across 7 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. Related forms include παρα, παραβαινω and παραβαλλω. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3868 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.
- 7 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
- #904
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 904 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.
- Pauline corpus 4 verses · 40%
- Gospels 3 verses · 30%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 30%
- Hebrews 2 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: Excused 2×, Refuse 2×
- American Standard Version: Refuse 5×, Excused 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Reject 3×, Excuse 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Reject 4×, Excused 2×, Refuse 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3868 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3868 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 G3868 across 12 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3868 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.
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 ask along side, beg to have near one
- to avert by entreaty or seek to avert, to deprecate
Word origin
Derived from παρα (pará) (G3844) — from.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms G3868 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| παραιτοῦ paraitoû | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular | 1 Timothy 4:7 | 4 |
| παρῃτημένον parētēménon | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Luke 14:18 | 2 |
| παραιτήσησθε paraitḗsēsthe | Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural | Hebrews 12:25 | 1 |
| παραιτεῖσθαι paraiteîsthai | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Infinitive | Luke 14:18 | 1 |
| παραιτησάμενοι paraitēsámenoi | Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Hebrews 12:25 | 1 |
| παραιτοῦμαι paraitoûmai | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | Acts 25:11 | 1 |
| παρῃτήσαντο parētḗsanto | Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Hebrews 12:19 | 1 |
| παρῃτοῦντο parētoûnto | Verb, Imperfect, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Mark 15:6 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3868, 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
- παραβαινω parabaínō G3845 to neglect
- παραβαλλω parabállō G3846 to place beside
- παραβιαζομαι parabiázomai G3849 to compel
- παραβουλευομαι parabouleúomai G3851 to consult wrongly
- παραγγελλω parangéllō G3853 to announce
- παραγινομαι paragínomai G3854 to appear
- παραγω parágō G3855 to pass by
- παραδειγματιζω paradeigmatízō G3856 to make example
- παραδεχομαι paradéchomai G3858 to receive
- παραδιατριβη paradiatribḗ G3859 empty business
- παραδιδωμι paradídōmi G3860 to deliver
- παραδοξος parádoxos G3861 strange
- παραζηλοω parazēlóō G3863 to provoke
- παραθαλασσιος parathalássios G3864 by the sea
- παραθεωρεω paratheōréō G3865 to compare
- παραινεω parainéō G3867 to exhort
- παρακαθιζω parakathízō G3869 to sit beside
- παρακαλεω parakaléō G3870 to call beside
- παρακαλυπτω parakalýptō G3871 to cover up
- παρακαταθηκη parakatathḗkē G3872 deposit
- παρακειμαι parákeimai G3873 to lie beside
- παρακολουθεω parakolouthéō G3877 to follow after
- παρακουω parakoúō G3878 to disobey
- παρακυπτω parakýptō G3879 to look into
+51 more words share this root (not shown).
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 78 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word παραιτεομαι appears 5 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 4 verses in 2 books.
- 5
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 4
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- 1 Samuel 20:6 παρααἰτέω
- Esther 4:8 παρααἰτέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3868) 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.
- 1 Samuel 20:6 παρααἰτέω If your father miss me at all, then say, David earnestly asked leave of me that he might run to Bethlehem his city; for it is the yearly sacrifice there for all the family.
- 1 Samuel 20:28 παρααἰτέω Jonathan answered Saul, David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem:
- Esther 4:8 παρααἰτέω Also he gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was given out in Shushan to destroy them, to show it to Esther, and to declare it to her, and to charge her that she should go in to the king, to make supplication to him, and to make request before him, for her people.
- Esther 7:7 παρααἰτέω The king arose in his wrath from the banquet of wine [and went] into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3868) 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.
