παῤῥησιάζομαι
to speak boldly
‘to speak boldly’ 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).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Middle or Passive deponent
- Middle/passive in form but active in meaning.
- Middle deponent
- Middle in form but active in meaning.
Mood
- 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
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G3955 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 9:27 ἐπαρρησιάσατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared to them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.
- Acts 9:28 παρρησιαζόμενος pres mid/pass.dep ptcp nom sg masc He was with them entering into Jerusalem,
- Acts 13:46 παρρησιασάμενοί aor mid.dep ptcp nom pl masc Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, and said, "It was necessary that God's word should be spoken to you first. Since indeed you thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.
- Acts 14:3 παρρησιαζόμενοι pres mid/pass.dep ptcp nom pl masc Therefore they stayed there a long time, speaking boldly in the Lord, who testified to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.
- Acts 18:26 παρρησιάζεσθαι pres mid/pass.dep inf He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside, and explained to him the way of God more accurately.
- Acts 19:8 ἐπαρρησιάζετο impf mid/pass.dep ind 3sg He entered into the synagogue, and spoke boldly for a period of three months, reasoning and persuading about the things concerning the Kingdom of God.
- Acts 26:26 παρρησιαζόμενος pres mid/pass.dep ptcp nom sg masc For the king knows of these things, to whom also I speak freely. For I am persuaded that none of these things is hidden from him, for this has not been done in a corner.
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.
παρρησιαζομαι — transliterated parrhēsiázomai — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to speak boldly.” Its uses cluster heavily in Acts (78% of all occurrences). With 9 verses in 3 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Debuting at Acts 9:27, it then recurs through the corpus. Thayer's distinguishes 2 senses for it. See the sense tree, 9-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3955 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,140
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,140 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 7 verses 78%
- Ephesians 1 verse 11%
- 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 11%
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 9 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 7 verses · 78%
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 22%
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: Boldly 1×, Freely 1×, He had preached boldly 1×
- American Standard Version: Freely 1×, He had preached boldly 1×, May speak boldly 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Speaking boldly 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Speaking boldly 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3955 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3955 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3955 across 9 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 G3955 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 use freedom in speaking, be free spoken
- to grow confident, have boldness, show assurance, assume a bold bearing
Word origin
Derived from παρρησια (parrhēsía) (G3954) — boldness.
Middle voice from G3954 ; to be frank in utterance or confident in spirit and demeanor : - be (wax) bold (preach speak) boldly.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms G3955 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| παρρησιαζόμενος parrēsiazómenos | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 9:28 | 2 |
| παρρησιάζεσθαι parrēsiázesthai | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Infinitive | Acts 18:26 | 1 |
| παρρησιάσωμαι parrēsiásōmai | Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Subjunctive, 1st person, Singular | Ephesians 6:20 | 1 |
| παρρησιαζόμενοι parrēsiazómenoi | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Acts 14:3 | 1 |
| παρρησιασάμενοί parrēsiasámenoí | Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Acts 13:46 | 1 |
| ἐπαρρησιάζετο eparrēsiázeto | Verb, Imperfect, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 19:8 | 1 |
| ἐπαρρησιάσατο eparrēsiásato | Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 9:27 | 1 |
| ἐπαρρησιασάμεθα eparrēsiasámetha | Verb, Aorist, Middle deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Plural | 1 Thessalonians 2:2 | 1 |
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word παρρησιαζομαι appears 4 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 4 verses in 3 books.
- 4
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 4
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Job 22:26 παρρησιάζομαι
- Psalms 11:6 παρρησιάζομαι
- Proverbs 20:9 παρρησιάζομαι
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3955) 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.
- Job 22:26 παρρησιάζομαι For then shall you delight yourself in the Almighty, And shall lift up your face to God.
- Psalms 11:6 παρρησιάζομαι On the wicked he will rain blazing coals; Fire, sulfur, and scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
- Psalms 93:1 παρρησιάζομαι Yahweh reigns! He is clothed with majesty! Yahweh is armed with strength. The world also is established. It can't be moved.
- Proverbs 20:9 παρρησιάζομαι Who can say, "I have made my heart pure. I am clean and without sin?"
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3955) 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.
