ὑπερβάλλω
to surpass
‘to surpass’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
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).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Feminine 2 times (40%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Neuter 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Feminine 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Neuter 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 G5235 appears — 5 distinct verses across 2 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.
2 Corinthians 2 verses
- 2 Corinthians 3:10 ὑπερβαλλούσης pres act ptcp gen sg fem For most assuredly that which has been made glorious has not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasses.
- 2 Corinthians 9:14 ὑπερβάλλουσαν pres act ptcp acc sg fem while they themselves also, with supplication on your behalf, yearn for you by reason of the exceeding grace of God in you.
Ephesians 3 verses
- Ephesians 1:19 ὑπερβάλλον pres act ptcp nom sg neut and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might
- Ephesians 2:7 ὑπερβάλλον pres act ptcp acc sg neut that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus;
- Ephesians 3:19 ὑπερβάλλουσαν pres act ptcp acc sg fem and to know Christ's love which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
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.
υπερβαλλω (hyperbállō) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to surpass.” The Greek New Testament uses it only 5 verses. Ephesians dominates its distribution — 3 of 5 verses. It first appears in 2 Corinthians 3:10. Ranging over 3 senses, it is not a single-sense word. 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 G5235 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.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 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 →
Most concentrated in
- Ephesians 3 verses 60%
- 2 Corinthians 2 verses 40%
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.
- Pauline corpus 5 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: Exceeding 2×
- American Standard Version: Exceeding 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Surpassing 3×, Surpasses 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Surpassing 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G5235 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 G5235 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 G5235 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G5235 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 3 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 surpass in throwing, to throw over or beyond any thing
- to transcend, surpass, exceed, excel
- excelling, exceeding
Word origin
Derived from υπερ (hypér) (G5228) — over.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G5235 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ὑπερβάλλον hyperbállon | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | Ephesians 2:7 | 2 |
| ὑπερβάλλουσαν hyperbállousan | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | 2 Corinthians 9:14 | 2 |
| ὑπερβαλλούσης hyperballoúsēs | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | 2 Corinthians 3:10 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5235, 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
- υβρις hýbris G5196 insult
- υπεραιρομαι hyperaíromai G5229 to exalt oneself
- υπερακμος hypérakmos G5230 overripe
- υπερανω hyperánō G5231 above
- υπεραυξανω hyperauxánō G5232 to increase greatly
- υπερβαινω hyperbaínō G5233 to step over
- υπερειδω hypereídō G5237 to overlook
- υπερεκεινα hyperékeina G5238 beyond
- υπερεκτεινω hyperekteínō G5239 to stretch beyond
- υπερεκχυνω hyperekchýnō G5240 to overflow
- υπερεντυγχανω hyperentynchánō G5241 to intercede
- υπερεχω hyperéchō G5242 to stand out
- υπερηφανος hyperḗphanos G5244 haughty
- υπερνικαω hypernikáō G5245 to overcome completely
- υπερογκος hypéronkos G5246 immoderate
- υπερπερισσευω hyperperisseúō G5248 to abound greatly
- υπερπερισσως hyperperissōs G5249 exceedingly
- υπερπλεοναζω hyperpleonázō G5250 to overflow
- υπερυψοω hyperypsóō G5251 to exalt highly
- υπερφρονεω hyperphronéō G5252 to think arrogantly
- υπερωον hyperōion G5253 upper room
- υψος hýpsos G5311 height
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 26 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
