πικραίνω
to embitter
‘to embitter’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Aorist-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
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
1 distinct verse where G4087 appears in the Future tense, across 1 book. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Revelation 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.
The Greek verb πικραινω centers on the idea of “to embitter.” It occurs a mere 4 verses across Scripture. Revelation dominates its distribution — 3 of 4 verses. Its earliest occurrence is Colossians 3:19. Thayer's distinguishes 4 senses for it. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4087 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,877
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,877 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 3 verses 75%
- Colossians 1 verse 25%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Johannine 3 verses · 75%
- Revelation 3 verses · 75%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 25%
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: Bitter 2×
- American Standard Version: Bitter 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Be harsh 1×, Bitter 1×, Turned bitter 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Bitter 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4087 across 6 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4087 across 6 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 G4087 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4087 across 6 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.
Senses in Thayer's
The 4 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 produce a bitter taste in the stomach
- render angry, indignant
- to be embittered, irritated
- to visit with bitterness, to grieve (deal bitterly with)
Word origin
Derived from πικρος (pikrós) (G4089) — bitter.
From G4089 ; to embitter (literally or figuratively): - be (make) bitter.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 4 distinct written forms G4087 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| πικραίνεσθε pikraínesthe | Verb, Present, Passive, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural | Colossians 3:19 | 1 |
| πικρανεῖ pikraneî | Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Revelation 10:9 | 1 |
| ἐπικράνθη epikránthē | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Revelation 10:10 | 1 |
| ἐπικράνθησαν epikránthēsan | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Revelation 8:11 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4087, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word πικραινω appears 9 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 9 verses in 6 books.
- 9
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 9
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 16:20 πικραίνω
- Ruth 1:13 πικραίνω
- Job 27:2 πικραίνω
- Isaiah 14:9 πικραίνω
- Jeremiah 39:32 πικραίνω
- Lamentations 1:4 πικραίνω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4087) 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.
- Exodus 16:20 πικραίνω Notwithstanding they didn't listen to Moses, but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and became foul: and Moses was angry with them.
- Ruth 1:13 πικραίνω would you therefore wait until they were grown? would you therefore stay from having husbands? nay, my daughters, for it grieves me much for your sakes, for the hand of Yahweh is gone forth against me.
- Ruth 1:20 πικραίνω She said to them, "Don't call me Naomi, call me Mara; for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
- Job 27:2 πικραίνω "As God lives, who has taken away my right, The Almighty, who has made my soul bitter.
- Isaiah 14:9 πικραίνω Sheol from beneath is moved for you to meet you at your coming; it stirs up the dead for you, even all the chief ones of the earth; it has raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.
- Jeremiah 39:32 πικραίνω
- Jeremiah 40:9 πικραίνω Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan swore to them and to their men, saying, Don't be afraid to serve the Chaldeans: dwell in the land, and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you.
- Jeremiah 44:15 πικραίνω Then all the men who knew that their wives burned incense to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, even all the people who lived in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying,
- Lamentations 1:4 πικραίνω The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly; All her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh: Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4087) 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.