ὑποστέλλω
to shrink
‘to shrink’ 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
- 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”).
Voice
- Middle
- The subject acts on or for itself, or with special interest in the action.
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
Person
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Number
- Singular
- One.
3 distinct verses where G5288 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
Hebrews 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.
At its core, υποστελλω (hypostéllō) means “to shrink.” A scarce word — 4 verses in all of the Greek New Testament. Its uses cluster heavily in Acts (50% of all occurrences). Scripture first uses it in Acts 20:20. 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 G5288 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,877
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,877 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 4 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 4 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 50%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 25%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 25%
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: Any man draw back 1×, He withdrew 1×, I have 1×
- American Standard Version: He drew back 1×, He shrink back 1×, I 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: I did not shrink back 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: He was withdrawing 1×, He would shrink back 1×, Hold back 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G5288 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G5288 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G5288 across 4 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G5288 across 5 tagged occurrences — 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.
- to draw back, let down, lower
- to withdraw one's self, i.e. to be timid, to cover, shrink
Word origin
Derived from υπο (hypó) (G5259) — under.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G5288 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ὑπεστειλάμην hypesteilámēn | Verb, Aorist, Middle, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | Acts 20:20 | 2 |
| ὑπέστελλεν hypéstellen | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Galatians 2:12 | 1 |
| ὑποστείληται hyposteílētai | Verb, Aorist, Middle, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular | Hebrews 10:38 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5288, 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
- υπαγω hypágō G5217 to depart
- υπακουω hypakoúō G5219 to listen
- υπανδρος hýpandros G5220 under (married)
- υπανταω hypantáō G5221 to meet
- υπαρχω hypárchō G5225 to be at hand
- υπεικω hypeíkō G5226 to yield
- υπεναντιος hypenantíos G5227 adversary
- υπεχω hypéchō G5254 to sustain
- υπηρετης hypērétēs G5257 servant
- υπνος hýpnos G5258 sleep
- υποβαλλω hypobállō G5260 to instigate
- υπογραμμος hypogrammós G5261 example
- υποδεικνυμι hypodeíknymi G5263 to demonstrate
- υποδεχομαι hypodéchomai G5264 to welcome
- υποδεω hypodéō G5265 to bind on
- υποδικος hypódikos G5267 debtor
- υποζυγιον hypozýgion G5268 beast of burden
- υποζωννυμι hypozṓnnymi G5269 to undergird
- υποκατω hypokátō G5270 underneath
- υποκρινομαι hypokrínomai G5271 to pretend
- υπολαμβανω hypolambánō G5274 to welcome
- υποληνιον hypolḗnion G5276 wine pit
- υπομενω hypoménō G5278 to endure
- υπομιμνησκω hypomimnḗskō G5279 to remind
+15 more words share this root (not shown).
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 42 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word υποστελλω appears 5 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 5 verses in 5 books.
- 5
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 5
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 23:21 ὑποστέλλω
- Deuteronomy 1:17 ὑποστέλλω
- Job 13:8 ὑποστέλλω
- Habakkuk 2:4 ὑποστέλλω
- Haggai 1:10 ὑποστέλλω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G5288) 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 23:21 ὑποστέλλω Pay attention to him, and listen to his voice. Don't provoke him, for he will not pardon your disobedience, for my name is in him.
- Deuteronomy 1:17 ὑποστέλλω You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike; you shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God's: and the cause that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.
- Job 13:8 ὑποστέλλω Will you show partiality to him? Will you contend for God?
- Habakkuk 2:4 ὑποστέλλω Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright in him, but the righteous will live by his faith.
- Haggai 1:10 ὑποστέλλω Therefore for your sake the heavens withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G5288) 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.
