πολυτελής
precious
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Dative-case word in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
Case
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Adjective, Dative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (33%)
- Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Feminine 1 time (33%)
- Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Neuter 1 time (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 3 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G4185 appears — 3 distinct verses across 3 books. 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.
Mark 1 verse
1 Timothy 1 verse
1 Peter 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.
πολυτελης (polytelḗs) is a Greek adjective most often rendered “precious.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. Mark dominates its distribution — 1 of 3 verses. It first appears in Mark 14:3. Related forms include πολυς, πλειστος and πλειων. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4185 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,203
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,203 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
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 3 distinct verses.
- Gospels 1 verse · 33%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 33%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 33%
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: Costly 1×, Great price 1×, Very precious 1×
- American Standard Version: Costly 1×, Great price 1×, Very costly 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Expensive 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Very precious 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4185 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4185 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4185 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 G4185 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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.
- precious
Word origin
Derived from πολυς (polýs) (G4183) — many.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G4185 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| πολυτελές polytelés | Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Neuter | 1 Peter 3:4 | 1 |
| πολυτελεῖ polyteleî | Adjective, Dative, Singular, Masculine | 1 Timothy 2:9 | 1 |
| πολυτελοῦς polyteloûs | Adjective, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | Mark 14:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4185, 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
- πλειστος pleîstos G4118 most
- πλειων pleíōn G4119 greater
- πολλακις pollákis G4178 often
- πολλαπλασιων pollaplasíōn G4179 manifold
- πολυλογια polylogía G4180 much speaking
- πολυμερως polymerōs G4181 by many times
- πολυποικιλος polypoíkilos G4182 much variegated
- πολυσπλαγχνος polýsplanchnos G4184 compassionate
- πολυτιμος polýtimos G4186 very valuable
- πολυτροπως polytrópōs G4187 in many ways
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 12 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word πολυτελης appears 9 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 9 verses in 5 books.
- 9
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 9
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- 1 Chronicles 29:2 πολυτελής
- Job 31:24 πολυτελής
- Proverbs 1:13 πολυτελής
- Isaiah 28:16 πολυτελής
- Daniel 11:38 πολυτελής
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4185) 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 Chronicles 29:2 πολυτελής Now I have prepared with all my might for the house of my God the gold for the [things of] gold, and the silver for the [things of] silver, and the brass for the [things of] brass, the iron for the [things of] iron, and wood for the [things of] wood; onyx stones, and [stones] to be set, stones for inlaid work, and of various colors, and all manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance.
- Job 31:24 πολυτελής "If I have made gold my hope, And have said to the fine gold, 'You are my confidence;'
- Proverbs 1:13 πολυτελής We'll find all valuable wealth. We'll fill our houses with spoil.
- Proverbs 3:15 πολυτελής She is more precious than rubies. None of the things you can desire are to be compared to her.
- Proverbs 8:11 πολυτελής For wisdom is better than rubies. All the things that may be desired can't be compared to it.
- Proverbs 25:12 πολυτελής As an ear-ring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, So is a wise reprover to an obedient ear.
- Proverbs 31:10 πολυτελής Who can find a worthy woman? For her price is far above rubies.
- Isaiah 28:16 πολυτελής therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner -[stone] of sure foundation: he who believes shall not be in haste.
- Daniel 11:38 πολυτελής But in his place shall he honor the god of fortresses; and a god whom his fathers didn't know shall he honor with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4185) 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.
