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πιπτω

to fall

‘to fall’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓

G4098 Strong's Greek
píptō Transliteration
/pip'-to/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 89 appearances

Compare with another word →

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 πιπτω centers on the idea of “to fall.” Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 2:11. The Greek New Testament uses it across 85 verses — moderately common. Thayer's distinguishes 2 senses for it. Sharing its root, it stands alongside πετομαι, πετεινον and πτερυξ. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
fail
Modern gloss
to fall
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G4098 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 →

85
distinct verses
The word appears in 85 distinct verses.
10 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 2:11
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 2:11.
Revelation 22:8
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 22:8.
#195
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 195 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 85 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 45 · 53%
  • Acts 9 · 11%
  • Pauline Epistles 7 · 8%
  • General Epistles 4 · 5%
  • Revelation 20 · 24%

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 85 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 45 verses · 53%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 26 verses · 31%
  • Johannine 23 verses · 27%
  • Revelation 20 verses · 24%
  • Pauline corpus 7 verses · 8%
  • Hebrews 3 verses · 4%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 1%

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: Fell 33×, Fall 10×, Fell down 10×
  • American Standard Version: Fell 29×, Fell down 9×, Fall 8×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Fell 25×, He fell 8×, Falls 7×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Fell 26×, Fall 8×, Having fallen 8×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G4098 across 92 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Fell” 33×
  • “Fall” 10×
  • “Fell down” 10×
  • “Shall fall” 5×
  • “Is fallen” 4×
  • “He fell” 3×
  • “I fell” 3×
  • “Shall” 3×
  • “Falleth” 2×

Plus 19 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 1 further occurrence.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G4098 across 90 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Fell” 29×
  • “Fell down” 9×
  • “Fall” 8×
  • “Fallen” 5×
  • “He fell” 4×
  • “I fell” 3×
  • “Shall fall” 3×
  • “Falleth” 2×
  • “He falleth” 2×
  • “He fell down” 2×

Plus 23 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 G4098 across 90 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Fell” 25×
  • “He fell” 8×
  • “Falls” 7×
  • “Fall” 6×
  • “Fell down” 5×
  • “Will fall” 5×
  • “Collapsed” 3×
  • “Fallen” 3×
  • “I fell” 3×
  • “Fallen is” 2×

Plus 23 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 1 further occurrence.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G4098 across 96 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Fell” 26×
  • “Fall” 8×
  • “Having fallen” 8×
  • “Falling” 5×
  • “Falls” 5×
  • “He fell” 5×
  • “Having fallen down” 4×
  • “Will fall” 4×
  • “Fell down” 3×
  • “I fell” 3×
  • “Fallen” 2×
  • “Falling down” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 17 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.

  1. to descend from a higher place to a lower
  2. to descend from an erect to a prostrate position

Word origin

Derived from πετομαι (pétomai) (G4072) — to fly.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 08:41,8

the first is a reduplicated and contracted form of the second (which occurs only as an alternate in certain tenses); probably akin to G4072 through the idea of alighting ; to fall (literally of figuratively): - fail fall (down) light on.

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 25 distinct written forms G4098 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἔπεσεν épesen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 7:25 29
πεσὼν pesṑn Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 4:9 12
ἔπεσαν épesan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 17:6 12
πίπτει píptei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 17:15 5
πέσῃ pésē Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Luke 20:18 4
πεσοῦνται pesoûntai Verb, Future, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 15:14 4
ἔπεσα épesa Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Revelation 1:17 3
πεσεῖται peseîtai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 10:29 2
πιπτόντων piptóntōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Neuter Matthew 15:27 2
πέπτωκες péptōkes Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Revelation 2:5 1
πέσατε pésate Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Luke 23:30 1
πέσετε pésete Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Revelation 6:16 1
πέσητε pésēte Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural James 5:12 1
πέσωσιν pésōsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Romans 11:11 1
πίπτοντες píptontes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Mark 13:25 1
πεπτωκυῖαν peptōkyîan Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Feminine Acts 15:16 1
πεπτωκότα peptōkóta Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Revelation 9:1 1
πεσεῖν peseîn Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Luke 16:17 1
πεσόν pesón Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Neuter Luke 8:14 1
πεσόντα pesónta Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Luke 10:18 1
πεσόντας pesóntas Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Romans 11:22 1
πεσόντες pesóntes Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 2:11 1
συνέπεσεν synépesen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 6:49 1
ἔπεσά épesá Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Acts 22:7 1
ἔπιπτεν épipten Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 14:35 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4098, 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 9 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word πιπτω appears 307 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 289 verses in 31 books.

307
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
289
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
31 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 31 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4098) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 289. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4098) 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.