ποτήριον
cup
‘cup’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Accusative-case word in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- 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
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
17 distinct verses where G4221 appears in the Accusative case, across 6 books. 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.
Matthew 4 verses
- Matthew 10:42 ποτήριον n acc sg neut Whoever gives one of these little ones just a cup of cold water to drink in the name of a disciple, most assuredly I tell you he will in no way lose his reward."
- Matthew 20:22 ποτήριον n acc sg neut But Jesus answered, "You don't know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They said to him, "We are able."
- Matthew 20:23 ποτήριόν n acc sg neut He said to them, "You will indeed drink my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with, but to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it is for whom it has been prepared by my Father."
- Matthew 26:27 ποτήριον n acc sg neut He took the cup, gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, "All of you drink it,
Mark 5 verses
- Mark 9:41 ποτήριον n acc sg neut For whoever will give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you are Christ's, most assuredly I tell you, he will in no way lose his reward.
- Mark 10:38 ποτήριον n acc sg neut But Jesus said to them, "You don't know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"
- Mark 10:39 ποτήριον n acc sg neut They said to him, "We are able." Jesus said to them, "You shall indeed drink the cup that I drink, and you shall be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with;
- Mark 14:23 ποτήριον n acc sg neut He took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them. They all drank of it.
- Mark 14:36 ποτήριον n acc sg neut He said, "Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Please remove this cup from me. However, not what I desire, but what you desire."
Luke 2 verses
John 1 verse
1 Corinthians 3 verses
- 1 Corinthians 10:21 ποτήριον ποτήριον n acc sg neut n acc sg neut You can't both drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You can't both partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons.
- 1 Corinthians 11:26 ποτήριον n acc sg neut For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
- 1 Corinthians 11:27 ποτήριον n acc sg neut Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks the Lord's cup in a manner unworthy of the Lord will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
Revelation 2 verses
- Revelation 16:19 ποτήριον n acc sg neut The great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.
- Revelation 17:4 ποτήριον n acc sg neut The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of the sexual immorality of the earth.
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.
ποτηριον (potḗrion) is a Greek noun most often rendered “cup.” It first appears in Matthew 10:42. The Greek New Testament uses it across 28 verses — moderately common. Matthew dominates its distribution — 7 of 28 verses. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4221 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 →
- 28
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 28 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #448
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 448 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 28 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Matthew 7 verses 25%
- Mark 6 verses 21%
- 1 Corinthians 6 verses 21%
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 28 distinct verses.
- Gospels 18 verses · 64%
- Pauline corpus 6 verses · 21%
- Johannine 5 verses · 18%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 4 verses · 14%
- Revelation 4 verses · 14%
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: Cup 30×, Cups 2×
- American Standard Version: Cup 30×
- Berean Standard Bible: Cup 30×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Cup 29×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4221 across 33 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4221 across 31 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4221 across 31 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 G4221 across 33 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 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 cup, a drinking vessel
- metaph. one's lot or experience…
Word origin
Derived from πινω (pínō) (G4095) — to drink.
Neuter of a derivative of the alternate of G4095 ; a drinking vessel ; by extension the contents thereof that is a cupful ( draught ); figuratively a lot or fate : - cup.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G4221 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ποτήριον potḗrion | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | Matthew 10:42 | 23 |
| ποτηρίου potēríou | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | Matthew 23:25 | 4 |
| ποτηρίῳ potēríō | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Revelation 14:10 | 2 |
| ποτήριόν potḗrión | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | Matthew 20:23 | 1 |
| ποτηρίων potēríōn | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Neuter | Mark 7:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4221, 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
- πιοτης piótēs G4096 fatness
- πομα póma G4188 drink
- ποσις pósis G4213 drink
- ποταμος potamós G4215 river
- ποτιζω potízō G4222 to give drink
- ποτος pótos G4224 drinking
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 8 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ποτηριον appears 32 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 28 verses in 12 books.
- 32
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 28
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 40:11 ποτήριον
- 2 Samuel 12:3 ποτήριον
- 1 Kings 7:12 ποτήριον
- 2 Chronicles 4:5 ποτήριον
- Esther 1:7 ποτήριον
- Psalms 10:6 ποτήριον
- Proverbs 23:31 ποτήριον
- Isaiah 51:17 ποτήριον
- Jeremiah 16:7 ποτήριον
- Lamentations 2:13 ποτήριον
- Ezekiel 23:31 ποτήριον
- Habakkuk 2:16 ποτήριον
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4221) 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 40:11 ποτήριον Pharaoh's cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand."
- Genesis 40:13 ποτήριον Within three more days, Pharaoh will lift up your head, and restore you to your office. You will give Pharaoh's cup into his hand, the way you did when you were his cupbearer.
- Genesis 40:21 ποτήριον He restored the chief cupbearer to his position again, and he gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand;
- 2 Samuel 12:3 ποτήριον but the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up together with him, and with his children. It ate of his own food, drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him like a daughter.
- 1 Kings 7:12 ποτήριον The great court round about had three courses of hewn stone, and a course of cedar beams; like as the inner court of the house of Yahweh, and the porch of the house.
- 2 Chronicles 4:5 ποτήριον It was a handbreadth thick; and the brim of it was worked like the brim of a cup, like the flower of a lily: it received and held three thousand baths.
- Esther 1:7 ποτήριον They gave them drink in vessels of gold (the vessels being diverse one from another), and royal wine in abundance, according to the bounty of the king.
- Psalms 10:6 ποτήριον He says in his heart, "I shall not be shaken; For generations I shall have no trouble."
- Psalms 15:5 ποτήριον He who doesn't lend out his money for usury, Nor take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be shaken.
- Psalms 22:5 ποτήριον They cried to you, and were delivered. They trusted in you, and were not disappointed.
- Psalms 74:9 ποτήριον We see no miraculous signs. There is no longer any prophet, Neither is there among us anyone who knows how long.
- Psalms 115:4 ποτήριον Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men's hands.
- Proverbs 23:31 ποτήριον Don't look at the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it goes down smoothly:
- Isaiah 51:17 ποτήριον Awake, awake, stand up, Jerusalem, that have drunk at the hand of Yahweh the cup of his wrath; you have drunken the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it.
- Isaiah 51:22 ποτήριον Thus says your Lord Yahweh, and your God who pleads the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of staggering, even the bowl of the cup of my wrath; you shall no more drink it again:
- Jeremiah 16:7 ποτήριον neither shall men break [bread] for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead; neither shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother.
- Jeremiah 28:7 ποτήριον Nevertheless hear you now this word that I speak in your ears, and in the ears of all the people:
- Jeremiah 30:6 ποτήριον Ask now, and see whether a man does travail with child: why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?
- Jeremiah 32:2 ποτήριον Now at that time the king of Babylon's army was besieging Jerusalem; and Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the guard, which was in the king of Judah's house.
- Jeremiah 32:4 ποτήριον and Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the hand of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes shall see his eyes;
- Jeremiah 32:15 ποτήριον For thus says Yahweh of Hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land.
- Jeremiah 42:5 ποτήριον Then they said to Jeremiah, Yahweh be a true and faithful witness among us, if we don't do according to all the word with which Yahweh your God shall send you to us.
- Lamentations 2:13 ποτήριον What shall I testify to you? what shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your breach is great like the sea: who can heal you?
- Lamentations 4:21 ποτήριον Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom, that dwell in the land of Uz: The cup shall pass through to you also; you shall be drunken, and shall make yourself naked.
- Ezekiel 23:31 ποτήριον You have walked in the way of your sister; therefore will I give her cup into your hand.
- Ezekiel 23:32 ποτήριον Thus says the Lord Yahweh: You shall drink of your sister's cup, which is deep and large; you shall ridiculed and had in derision; it contains much.
- Ezekiel 23:33 ποτήριον You shall be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of your sister Samaria.
- Habakkuk 2:16 ποτήριον You are filled with shame, and not glory. You will also drink, and be exposed! The cup of Yahweh's right hand will come around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4221) 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.
