σπουδαῖος
diligent
also: active, zealous, earnest 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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
- Adverb
- A word that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Degree
- Comparative
- Expresses a greater degree (“greater,” “more”).
Grammatical forms
- Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (33%)
- Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine, Comparative 1 time (33%)
- Adverb, Comparative 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 G4705 appears — 2 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
2 Corinthians 2 verses
- 2 Corinthians 8:17 σπουδαιότερος adj nom sg masc comp For he indeed accepted our exhortation, but being himself very earnest, he went out to you of his own accord.
- 2 Corinthians 8:22 σπουδαῖον σπουδαιότερον adj acc sg masc adv comp We have sent with them our brother, whom we have many times proved earnest in many things, but now much more earnest, by reason of the great confidence which he has in you.
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.
σπουδαιος (spoudaîos) is a Greek adjective most often rendered “diligent.” It is rare — just 2 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. It clusters heavily in 2 Corinthians, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in 2 Corinthians 8:17. Ranging over 2 senses, its meaning includes “active”, “zealous”, and “earnest”. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4705 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 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 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Corinthians 2 verses 100%
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 2 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 100%
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: Diligent 1×
- American Standard Version: Himself very earnest 1×, Proved ephesians earnest 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Earnestness 1×, Is eagerly 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Eager 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4705 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4705 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4705 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4705 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
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.
- active, diligent, zealous, earnest
- very diligent
Word origin
Derived from σπουδη (spoudḗ) (G4710) — haste.
From G4710 ; prompt energetic earnest : - diligent.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G4705 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| σπουδαιότερον spoudaióteron | Adverb, Comparative | 2 Corinthians 8:22 | 1 |
| σπουδαιότερος spoudaióteros | Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine, Comparative | 2 Corinthians 8:17 | 1 |
| σπουδαῖον spoudaîon | Adjective, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | 2 Corinthians 8:22 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4705, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word σπουδαιος appears 1 time in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 1 verse in 1 book.
- 1
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 1
- verse
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Ezekiel 41:25 σπουδαῖος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4705) 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.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4705) 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.
