σημαίνω
to signify
‘to signify’ 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 Aorist-tense verb in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Tense
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
3 distinct verses where G4591 appears in the Aorist tense, across 2 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.
Acts 2 verses
- Acts 11:28 ἐσήμανεν aor act ind 3sg One of them named Agabus stood up, and indicated by the Spirit that there should be a great famine all over the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius.
- Acts 25:27 σημᾶναι aor act inf For it seems to me unreasonable, in sending a prisoner, not to also specify the charges against him."
Revelation 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.
“to signify” is the headline sense of the Greek verb σημαινω (sēmaínō). More than half of its appearances fall in John. It appears 6 verses across 3 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. First canonically at John 12:33, it enters the text early. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4591 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,476
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,476 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- John 3 verses 50%
- Acts 2 verses 33%
- Revelation 1 verse 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 6 distinct verses.
- Johannine 4 verses · 67%
- Gospels 3 verses · 50%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 33%
- Revelation 1 verse · 17%
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: Signifying 3×, Signified 2×
- American Standard Version: Signifying 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Indicate 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Indicate 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4591 across 6 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 G4591 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 G4591 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear 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 G4591 across 6 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.
- to give a sign, to signify, indicate
- to make known
Word origin
Origin: from sema (a mark, of uncertain derivation)
From σῆμα sē ma (a mark ; of uncertain derivation); to indicate : - signify.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G4591 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| σημαίνων sēmaínōn | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | John 12:33 | 3 |
| ἐσήμανεν esḗmanen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 11:28 | 2 |
| σημᾶναι sēmânai | Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive | Acts 25:27 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4591, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word σημαινω appears 20 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 20 verses in 13 books.
- 20
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 20
- 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
- Exodus 18:20 σημαίνω
- Numbers 10:9 σημαίνω
- Joshua 6:8 σημαίνω
- Judges 7:21 σημαίνω
- 2 Chronicles 13:12 σημαίνω
- Ezra 3:11 σημαίνω
- Esther 2:22 σημαίνω
- Job 39:24 σημαίνω
- Proverbs 6:13 σημαίνω
- Jeremiah 4:5 σημαίνω
- Ezekiel 33:3 σημαίνω
- Daniel 2:15 σημαίνω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4591) 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.
- Exodus 18:20 σημαίνω You shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and shall show them the way in which they must walk, and the work that they must do.
- Numbers 10:9 σημαίνω When you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets; and you shall be remembered before Yahweh your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.
- Joshua 6:8 σημαίνω It was so, that when Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams' horns before Yahweh passed on, and blew the trumpets: and the ark of the covenant of Yahweh followed them.
- Judges 7:21 σημαίνω They stood every man in his place round about the camp; and all the host ran; and they shouted, and put [them] to flight.
- 2 Chronicles 13:12 σημαίνω Behold, God is with us at our head, and his priests with the trumpets of alarm to sound an alarm against you. Children of Israel, don't you fight against Yahweh, the God of your fathers; for you shall not prosper.
- Ezra 3:11 σημαίνω They sang one to another in praising and giving thanks to Yahweh, [saying], For he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever toward Israel. All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised Yahweh, because the foundation of the house of Yahweh was laid.
- Ezra 18:15 σημαίνω
- Esther 2:22 σημαίνω The thing became known to Mordecai, who shown it to Esther the queen; and Esther told the king [of it] in Mordecai's name.
- Job 39:24 σημαίνω He eats up the ground with fierceness and rage, Neither does he stand still at the sound of the trumpet.
- Job 39:25 σημαίνω As often as the trumpet sounds he snorts, 'Aha!' He smells the battle afar off, The thunder of the captains, and the shouting.
- Proverbs 6:13 σημαίνω Who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet, Who motions with his fingers;
- Jeremiah 4:5 σημαίνω Declare you in Judah, and publish in Jerusalem; and say, Blow you the trumpet in the land: cry aloud and say, Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities.
- Jeremiah 6:1 σημαίνω Flee for safety, you children of Benjamin, out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise up a signal on Beth Haccherem; for evil looks forth from the north, and a great destruction.
- Ezekiel 33:3 σημαίνω if, when he sees the sword come on the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
- Ezekiel 33:6 σημαίνω But if the watchman sees the sword come, and doesn't blow the trumpet, and the people aren't warned, and the sword comes, and take any person from among them; he is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand.
- Daniel 2:15 σημαίνω he answered Arioch the king's captain, Why is the decree so urgent from the king? Then Arioch made the thing known to Daniel.
- Daniel 2:23 σημαίνω I thank you, and praise you, you God of my fathers, who have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we desired of you; for you have made known to us the king's matter.
- Daniel 2:30 σημαίνω But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but to the intent that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart.
- Daniel 2:45 σημαίνω Because you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God has made known to the king what shall happen hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation of it sure.
- Zechariah 10:8 σημαίνω I will signal for them, and gather them; For I have redeemed them; And they will increase as they have increased.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4591) 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.
