πόρνη
prostitute
‘prostitute’ is one of 2 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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G4204 appears in the Book of Matthew — 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.
Matthew
- Matthew 21:31 πόρναι n nom pl fem Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said to him, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly I tell you that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering into the Kingdom of God before you.
- Matthew 21:32 πόρναι n nom pl fem For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn't believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. When you saw it, you didn't even repent afterward, that you might believe him.
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.
“prostitute” is the headline sense of the Greek noun πορνη (pórnē). First canonically at Matthew 21:31, it enters the text early. The Greek New Testament uses it across 12 verses — uncommon. More than a third of its appearances fall in Revelation. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4204 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #904
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 904 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 12 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 5 verses 42%
- Matthew 2 verses 17%
- 1 Corinthians 2 verses 17%
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 12 distinct verses.
- Johannine 5 verses · 42%
- Revelation 5 verses · 42%
- Gospels 3 verses · 25%
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 17%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 8%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 8%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 8%
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: Harlot 4×, Harlots 4×, Whore 4×
- American Standard Version: Harlot 8×, Harlots 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Prostitute 8×, Prostitutes 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Prostitute 8×, Prostitutes 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4204 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4204 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4204 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4204 across 13 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 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.
- a woman who sells her body for sexual uses
- metaph. an idolatress
Word origin
Derived from πορνος (pórnos) (G4205) — male prostitute.
Feminine of G4205 ; a strumpet ; figuratively an idolater : - harlot whore.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G4204 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| πόρνη pórnē | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | Hebrews 11:31 | 3 |
| πορνῶν pornō̂n | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Feminine | Luke 15:30 | 2 |
| πόρναι pórnai | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Feminine | Matthew 21:31 | 2 |
| πόρνην pórnēn | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Revelation 17:16 | 2 |
| πόρνης pórnēs | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | 1 Corinthians 6:15 | 2 |
| πόρνῃ pórnē | Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine | 1 Corinthians 6:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4204, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word πορνη appears 37 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 35 verses in 13 books.
- 37
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 35
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 34:31 πόρνη
- Leviticus 21:7 πόρνη
- Deuteronomy 23:3 πόρνη
- Joshua 2:1 πόρνη
- Judges 11:1 πόρνη
- 1 Kings 3:16 πόρνη
- Proverbs 5:3 πόρνη
- Isaiah 1:21 πόρνη
- Jeremiah 3:3 πόρνη
- Ezekiel 16:30 πόρνη
- Hosea 4:14 πόρνη
- Joel 4:3 πόρνη
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4204) 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.
- Genesis 34:31 πόρνη They said, "Should he deal with our sister as with a prostitute?"
- Genesis 38:15 πόρνη When Judah saw her, he thought that she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.
- Genesis 38:21 πόρνη Then he asked the men of her place, saying, "Where is the prostitute, that was at Enaim by the road?" They said, "There has been no prostitute here."
- Genesis 38:22 πόρνη He returned to Judah, and said, "I haven't found her; and also the men of the place said, 'There has been no prostitute here.'"
- Leviticus 21:7 πόρνη "'They shall not marry a woman who is a prostitute, or profane; neither shall they marry a woman divorced from her husband: for he is holy to his God.
- Leviticus 21:14 πόρνη A widow, or one divorced, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute, these he shall not marry: but a virgin of his own people shall he take as a wife.
- Deuteronomy 23:3 πόρνη An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of Yahweh; even to the tenth generation shall none belonging to them enter into the assembly of Yahweh forever:
- Deuteronomy 23:18 πόρνη You shall not bring the hire of a prostitute, or the wages of a dog, into the house of Yahweh your God for any vow: for even both these are an abomination to Yahweh your God.
- Deuteronomy 23:19 πόρνη You shall not lend on interest to your brother; interest of money, interest of food, interest of anything that is lent on interest:
- Joshua 2:1 πόρνη Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men as spies secretly, saying, Go, view the land, and Jericho. They went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and lay there.
- Joshua 6:17 πόρνη The city shall be devoted, even it and all that is therein, to Yahweh: only Rahab the prostitute shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.
- Joshua 6:23 πόρνη The young men the spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brothers, and all that she had; all her relatives also they brought out; and they set them outside of the camp of Israel.
- Joshua 6:25 πόρνη But Rahab the prostitute, and her father's household, and all that she had, did Joshua save alive; and she lived in the midst of Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers, whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.
- Judges 11:1 πόρνη Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor, and he was the son of a prostitute: and Gilead became the father of Jephthah.
- Judges 16:1 πόρνη Samson went to Gaza, and saw there a prostitute, and went in to her.
- 1 Kings 3:16 πόρνη Then there came two women who were prostitutes, to the king, and stood before him.
- 1 Kings 12:24 πόρνη Thus says Yahweh, You shall not go up, nor fight against your brothers the children of Israel: return every man to his house; for this thing is of me. So they listened to the word of Yahweh, and returned and went their way, according to the word of Yahweh.
- 1 Kings 20:19 πόρνη So these went out of the city, the young men of the princes of the provinces, and the army which followed them.
- 1 Kings 22:38 πόρνη They washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood (now the prostitutes washed themselves [there]); according to the word of Yahweh which he spoke.
- Proverbs 5:3 πόρνη For the lips of an adulteress drip honey. Her mouth is smoother than oil,
- Proverbs 6:26 πόρνη For a prostitute reduces you to a piece of bread. The adulteress hunts for your precious life.
- Proverbs 29:3 πόρνη Whoever loves wisdom brings joy to his father; But a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth.
- Isaiah 1:21 πόρνη How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice; righteousness lodged in her, But now murderers.
- Isaiah 23:16 πόρνη Take a harp, go about the city, you prostitute that has been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that you may be remembered.
- Isaiah 57:3 πόρνη But draw near here, you sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the prostitute.
- Jeremiah 3:3 πόρνη Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there has been no latter rain; yet you have a prostitute's forehead, you refused to be ashamed.
- Jeremiah 5:7 πόρνη How can I pardon you? your children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they committed adultery, and assembled themselves in troops at the prostitutes' houses.
- Ezekiel 16:30 πόρνη How weak is your heart, says the Lord Yahweh, seeing you do all these things, the work of an impudent prostitute;
- Ezekiel 16:31 πόρνη in that you build your vaulted place at the head of every way, and make your lofty place in every street, and have not been as a prostitute, in that you scorn pay.
- Ezekiel 16:35 πόρνη Therefore, prostitute, hear the word of Yahweh:
- Ezekiel 23:43 πόρνη Then said I of her who was old in adulteries, Now will they play the prostitute with her, and she [with them].
- Ezekiel 23:44 πόρνη They went in to her, as they go in to a prostitute: so went they in to Oholah and to Oholibah, the lewd women.
- Hosea 4:14 πόρνη I will not punish your daughters when they play the prostitute, Nor your brides when they commit adultery; Because the men consort with prostitutes, And they sacrifice with the shrine prostitutes; And the people that does not understand will come to ruin.
- Joel 4:3 πόρνη
- Nahum 3:4 πόρνη because of the multitude of the prostitution of the alluring prostitute, the mistress of witchcraft, who sells nations through her prostitution, and families through her witchcraft.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4204) 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.
