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πολυς

many

G4183 Strong's Greek
polýs Transliteration
/pol-oos'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 354 appearances

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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 adjective πολυς centers on the idea of “many.” Debuting at Matthew 2:18, it then recurs through the corpus. Spanning 319 verses in 25 books, it ranks among the common words of the Greek New Testament. Sharing its root, it stands alongside πλειστος, πλειων and πολλακις. 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
abundant
Modern gloss
many
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 G4183 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 →

319
distinct verses
The word appears in 319 distinct verses.
25 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 25 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 2:18
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 2:18.
Revelation 19:12
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 19:12.
#50
by frequency
Top 50 most frequent Greek words (rank 50 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 319 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 173 · 54%
  • Acts 45 · 14%
  • Pauline Epistles 71 · 22%
  • General Epistles 17 · 5%
  • Revelation 13 · 4%

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 319 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 173 verses · 54%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 89 verses · 28%
  • Pauline corpus 71 verses · 22%
  • Johannine 53 verses · 17%
  • Revelation 13 verses · 4%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 10 verses · 3%
  • Hebrews 7 verses · 2%

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: Many 172×, Much 72×, Great 56×
  • American Standard Version: Many 170×, Much 63×, Great 53×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Many 167×, Great 37×, Large 30×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Many 189×, Much 63×, Great 31×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G4183 across 364 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Many” 172×
  • “Much” 72×
  • “Great” 56×
  • “Many things” 24×
  • “Greatly” 4×
  • “Long” 4×
  • “Are many” 2×
  • “Being many” 2×
  • “Is great” 2×
  • “Than many” 2×

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 3 further occurrences.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G4183 across 354 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Many” 170×
  • “Much” 63×
  • “Great” 53×
  • “Many things” 18×
  • “Are many” 5×
  • “Long” 3×
  • “Common” 2×
  • “Far spent” 2×
  • “Great deal” 2×
  • “Greatly” 2×
  • “Is plenteous” 2×
  • “More” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 28 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 G4183 across 338 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Many” 167×
  • “Great” 37×
  • “Large” 30×
  • “Much” 24×
  • “Many things” 14×
  • “How much” 6×
  • “Long” 5×
  • “Few” 3×
  • “Plentiful” 3×
  • “All” 2×
  • “Even” 2×
  • “Far” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 33 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 14 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G4183 across 343 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Many” 189×
  • “Much” 63×
  • “Great” 31×
  • “Large” 19×
  • “Many things” 15×
  • “Is great” 3×
  • “Long” 3×
  • “Very” 3×
  • “Are many” 2×
  • “How much” 2×
  • “Is plentiful” 2×
  • “People” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 7 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 1 sense 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. many, much, large

Word origin

Origin: including the forms from the alternate pollos

Part of speech: Adjective TDNT: 6:536,*

Including the forms from the alternate pollos; (singular) much (in any respect) or (plural) many ; neuter (singular) as adverb largely ; neuter (plural) as adverb or noun often mostly largely : - abundant + altogether common + far (passed spent) (+ be of a) great (age deal -ly while) long many much oft (-en [-times]) plenteous sore straitly. Compare G4118 G4119 .

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


Forms in the corpus

The 30 distinct written forms G4183 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
πολλοὶ polloì Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 4:25 63
πολλὰ pollà Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Neuter Matthew 13:3 43
πολλῶν pollō̂n Adjective, Genitive, Plural, Masculine Matthew 8:30 39
πολλῷ pollō̂ Adjective, Dative, Singular, Neuter Matthew 6:30 20
πολὺ polỳ Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Mark 12:27 18
πολλοί polloí Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 7:13 17
πολλοὺς polloùs Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 3:7 17
πολλά pollá Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Neuter Matthew 19:22 15
πολὺς polỳs Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 5:12 14
πολλῆς pollē̂s Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Feminine Matthew 24:30 13
πολύς polýs Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 2:18 12
πολλὰς pollàs Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Feminine Matthew 7:22 8
πολλῇ pollē̂ Adjective, Dative, Singular, Feminine Romans 9:22 8
πολὺν polỳn Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 14:14 8
πολλοῖς polloîs Adjective, Dative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 27:53 7
πολλὴν pollḕn Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Feminine Luke 10:40 7
πολλοῦ polloû Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Masculine Luke 8:4 6
πολλούς polloús Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 8:16 6
πολύ polý Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Luke 5:6 5
Πολλὰ Pollà Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Neuter Luke 3:18 4
πολλαῖς pollaîs Adjective, Dative, Plural, Feminine Mark 4:33 4
Πολλοὶ Polloì Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Masculine John 6:60 3
πολλάς pollás Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Feminine Luke 12:47 3
πολλή pollḗ Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Mark 6:35 3
πολλαί pollaí Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Feminine Luke 7:47 3
πολλαὶ pollaì Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Feminine Matthew 27:55 3
πολλήν pollḗn Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 13:5 2
πολλὴ pollḕ Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Acts 8:8 1
πολύν polýn Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Masculine John 15:5 1
πόλλου póllou Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Masculine Mark 8:1 1


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word πολυς appears 543 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 509 verses in 35 books.

543
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
509
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
35 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 35 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4183) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 509. 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 (G4183) 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).

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