συμπνίγω
to choke
‘to choke’ 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 Present-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
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G4846 appears — 5 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.
Matthew 1 verse
Mark 2 verses
- Mark 4:7 συνέπνιξαν aor act ind 3pl Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.
- Mark 4:19 συνπνίγουσιν pres act ind 3pl and the cares of this age, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
Luke 2 verses
- Luke 8:14 συνπνίγονται pres pass ind 3pl That which fell among the thorns, these are those who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.
- Luke 8:42 συνέπνιγον impf act ind 3pl for he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying. But as he went, the multitudes pressed against 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.
At its core, συμπνιγω (sympnígō) means “to choke.” The Greek New Testament uses it only 5 verses. The word gravitates to Mark (40%), then Luke and Matthew. First canonically at Matthew 13:22, it enters the text early. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4846 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,648
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,648 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Gospels 5 verses · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 40%
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: Choke 2×
- American Standard Version: Choke 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Choke 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Choke 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4846 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4846 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 G4846 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4846 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.
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.
- metaph. the seed of the divine word sown in the mind
- to press round or throng one so as almost to suffocate him
Word origin
Derived from συν (sýn) (G4862) — with.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G4846 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| συμπνίγει sympnígei | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Matthew 13:22 | 1 |
| συνέπνιγον synépnigon | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Luke 8:42 | 1 |
| συνέπνιξαν synépnixan | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Mark 4:7 | 1 |
| συνπνίγονται synpnígontai | Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Luke 8:14 | 1 |
| συνπνίγουσιν synpnígousin | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Mark 4:19 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4846, 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
- κοινος koinós G2839 common
- συγγενης syngenḗs G4773 related by blood
- συγγνωμη syngnṓmē G4774 pardon
- συγκαθημαι synkáthēmai G4775 to sit together
- συγκαθιζω synkathízō G4776 to sit together
- συγκακοπαθεω synkakopathéō G4777 to suffer together
- συγκακουχεω synkakouchéō G4778 to be ill-treated together
- συγκαλεω synkaléō G4779 to call together
- συγκαλυπτω synkalýptō G4780 to cover completely
- συγκαμπτω synkámptō G4781 to bend together
- συγκαταβαινω synkatabaínō G4782 to go down with
- συγκατατιθεμαι synkatatíthemai G4784 to deposit together
- συγκαταψηφιζω synkatapsēphízō G4785 to vote against
- συγκεραννυμι synkeránnymi G4786 to mix together
- συγκλειω synkleíō G4788 to shut up
- συγκληρονομος synklēronómos G4789 joint heir
- συγκοινωνεω synkoinōnéō G4790 to share together
- συγκοινωνος synkoinōnós G4791 joint partner
- συγκομιζω synkomízō G4792 to collect together
- συγκρινω synkrínō G4793 to join together
- συγκυπτω synkýptō G4794 to bend together
- συγκυρια synkyría G4795 by chance
- συγχαιρω synchaírō G4796 to rejoice with
- συγχεω synchéō G4797 to disturb
+125 more words share this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 151 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
