τολμάω
to dare
‘to dare’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Imperfect-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
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms 11 distinct
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 4 times (25%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 time (6%)
+3 more forms (3 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 16 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G5111 appears — 15 distinct verses across 10 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 12:34 ἐτόλμα impf act ind 3sg When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." No one dared ask him any question after that.
- Mark 15:43 τολμήσας aor act ptcp nom sg masc Joseph of Arimathaea, a prominent council member who also himself was looking for the Kingdom of God, came. He boldly went in to Pilate, and asked for Jesus' body.
Luke 1 verse
John 1 verse
Acts 2 verses
Romans 2 verses
- Romans 5:7 τολμᾷ pres act ind 3sg For one will hardly die for a righteous man. Yet perhaps for a righteous person someone would even dare to die.
- Romans 15:18 τολμήσω fut act ind 1sg For I will not dare to speak of any things except those which Christ worked through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed,
1 Corinthians 1 verse
2 Corinthians 3 verses
- 2 Corinthians 10:2 τολμῆσαι aor act inf Yes, I beg you that I may not, when present, show courage with the confidence with which I intend to be bold against some, who consider us to be walking according to the flesh.
- 2 Corinthians 10:12 τολμῶμεν pres act ind 1pl For we are not bold to number or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves. But they themselves, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves with themselves, are without understanding.
- 2 Corinthians 11:21 τολμᾷ τολμῶ pres act subj 3sg pres act ind 1sg I speak by way of disparagement, as though we had been weak. Yet however any is bold (I speak in foolishness), I am bold also.
Philippians 1 verse
Jude 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 dare” is the headline sense of the Greek verb τολμαω (tolmáō). Catalogued under 5 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. It turns up in 15 verses across 10 books, an uncommon footprint. First canonically at Matthew 22:46, it enters the text early. From the same root come τελος, τελειος and τελεσφορεω. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G5111 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 10 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
- #726
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 726 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 15 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Corinthians 3 verses 20%
- Mark 2 verses 13%
- Acts 2 verses 13%
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 15 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 7 verses · 47%
- Gospels 5 verses · 33%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 20%
- Johannine 1 verse · 7%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 7%
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: Durst 6×, Dare 3×
- American Standard Version: Durst 6×, Dare 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Dared 4×, Dare 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Dare 8×, Dared 3×, Did 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G5111 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 G5111 across 19 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 G5111 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G5111 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 5 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.
- not to dread or shun through fear
- to bear, endure
- to bring one's self to
- to be bold
- bear one's self boldly, deal boldly
Word origin
Derived from τελος (télos) (G5056) — end.
From τόλμα tolma ( boldness ; probably itself from the base of G5056 through the idea of extreme conduct); to venture (objectively or in act ; while G2292 is rather subjective or in feeling ); by implication to be courageous : - be bold boldly dare durst.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 12 distinct written forms G5111 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5111, 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
- τελειος téleios G5046 perfect
- τελεσφορεω telesphoréō G5052 to mature
- τελεω teléō G5055 to finish
- τελωνης telṓnēs G5057 tax collector
- τηλαυγως tēlaugōs G5081 from afar clearly
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 9 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word τολμαω appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 2 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Esther 1:18 τολμάω
- Job 15:12 τολμάω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G5111) 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.
- Esther 1:18 τολμάω This day will the princesses of Persia and Media who have heard of the deed of the queen say [the like] to all the king's princes. So [will there arise] much contempt and wrath.
- Esther 7:5 τολμάω Then spoke the king Ahasuerus and said to Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that dared presume in his heart to do so?
- Job 15:12 τολμάω Why does your heart carry you away? Why do your eyes flash,
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G5111) 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.
