περισσεύω
to abound
‘to abound’ 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).
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Optative
- Expresses a wish or a remote possibility.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G4052 appears in the Book of John — 2 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.
John
- John 6:12 περισσεύσαντα aor act ptcp acc pl neut When they were filled, he said to his disciples, "Gather up the broken pieces which are left over, that nothing be lost."
- John 6:13 ἐπερίσσευσαν aor act ind 3pl So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves, which were left over by those who had eaten.
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 abound” is the headline sense of the Greek verb περισσευω (perisseúō). Scripture first uses it in Matthew 5:20. With 35 verses in 12 books, it is a moderately common word in the Greek New Testament. Catalogued under 3 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. From the same root come περισσος, περισσοτερος and περισσως. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4052 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 →
- 35
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 35 distinct verses.
- 12 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 12 of 27 New Testament books.
- #385
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 385 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 35 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Corinthians 7 verses 20%
- Matthew 5 verses 14%
- Luke 4 verses 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 35 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 22 verses · 63%
- Gospels 12 verses · 34%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 5 verses · 14%
- Johannine 2 verses · 6%
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: Abound 5×, Abundance 3×, Abounding 2×
- American Standard Version: Abound 7×, May abound 4×, Remained 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Abound 3×, Excel 3×, Were left over 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Abound 8×, Abounding 6×, Abounds 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4052 across 41 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 25 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 G4052 across 39 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 16 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 G4052 across 37 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 24 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 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4052 across 44 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 21 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 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 exceed a fixed number of measure, to be left over and above a certain number or measure
- to furnish one richly so that he has abundance
- to make abundant or excellent
Word origin
Derived from περισσος (perissós) (G4053) — exceeding.
From G4053 ; to superabound (in quantity or quality) be in excess be superfluous ; also (transitively) to cause to superabound or excel : - (make more) abound (have have more) abundance (be more) abundant be the better enough and to spare exceed excel increase be left redound remain (over and above).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 21 distinct written forms G4052 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4052, 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
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word περισσευω appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 2 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- 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 2:33 περισσεύω
- Ecclesiastes 3:19 περισσεύω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4052) 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 2:33 περισσεύω The man of yours, [whom] I shall not cut off from my altar, [shall be] to consume your eyes, and to grieve your heart; and all the increase of your house shall die in the flower of their age.
- 1 Samuel 2:36 περισσεύω It shall happen, that everyone who is left in your house shall come and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread, and shall say, Please put me into one of the priests' offices, that I may eat a morsel of bread.
- Ecclesiastes 3:19 περισσεύω For that which happens to the sons of men happens to animals. Even one thing happens to them. As the one dies, so the other dies. Yes, they have all one breath; and man has no advantage over the animals: for all is vanity.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4052) 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.
