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φάγω

to eat

‘to eat’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓

G5315 Strong's Greek
phágō Transliteration
/fag'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 93 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

The Greek verb φαγω centers on the idea of “to eat.” Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 6:25. Spanning 86 verses in 11 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Greek New Testament. Lexicons map it across 3 senses. Related forms include εσθιω, νηστις and οδους. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
eat
Modern gloss
to eat
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current Thayer scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G5315 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 →

86
distinct verses
The word appears in 86 distinct verses.
11 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 11 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 6:25
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 6:25.
Revelation 19:18
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 19:18.
#186
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 186 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 86 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 59 · 69%
  • Acts 6 · 7%
  • Pauline Epistles 13 · 15%
  • General Epistles 2 · 2%
  • Revelation 6 · 7%

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 86 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 59 verses · 69%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 25 verses · 29%
  • Johannine 20 verses · 23%
  • Pauline corpus 13 verses · 15%
  • Revelation 6 verses · 7%
  • Hebrews 1 verse · 1%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 1%

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: Eat 48×, Did eat 7×, Meat 3×
  • American Standard Version: Eat 45×, Ate 10×, Shall eat 3×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Eat 40×, Ate 11×, You eat 3×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G5315 across 105 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Eat” 48×
  • “Did eat” 7×
  • “Meat” 3×
  • “Shall eat” 3×
  • “They did” 3×
  • “They did eat” 3×
  • “Ye shall eat” 3×
  • “I shall eat” 2×
  • “Let us eat” 2×
  • “May eat” 2×
  • “We eat” 2×

Plus 27 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 G5315 across 99 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Eat” 45×
  • “Ate” 10×
  • “Shall eat” 3×
  • “They ate” 3×
  • “Ye shall eat” 3×
  • “I shall eat” 2×
  • “Let us eat” 2×
  • “May eat” 2×
  • “They” 2×
  • “We eat” 2×

Plus 25 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 G5315 across 92 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Eat” 40×
  • “Ate” 11×
  • “You eat” 3×
  • “You will eat” 3×
  • “Food” 2×
  • “Had eaten” 2×
  • “I may eat” 2×
  • “May eat” 2×
  • “They all ate” 2×

Plus 25 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 1 further occurrence.


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.

  1. to eat
  2. to take food, eat a meal
  3. metaph. to devour, consume

Word origin

Derived from εσθιω (esthíō) (G2068) — to eat.

Part of speech: Verb

A primary verb (used as an alternate of G2068 in certain tenses); to eat (literally or figuratively): - eat meat.

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 18 distinct written forms G5315 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
φαγεῖν phageîn Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Matthew 12:4 34
ἔφαγον éphagon Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 12:4 13
φάγωσιν phágōsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 15:32 6
φάγητε phágēte Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 6:25 5
φάγω phágō Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Singular Mark 14:14 5
φάγωμεν phágōmen Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural Matthew 6:31 5
ἔφαγεν éphagen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 2:26 5
φάγε pháge Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Luke 12:19 4
φάγῃ phágē Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Luke 7:36 4
φάγεται phágetai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 14:15 2
φαγόντες phagóntes Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Mark 6:44 2
ἐφάγομεν ephágomen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Luke 13:26 2
φάγεσαι phágesai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Luke 17:8 1
φάγετε phágete Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 26:26 1
φάγοι phágoi Verb, Aorist, Active, Optative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 11:14 1
φάγονται phágontai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Revelation 17:16 1
φάγῃς phágēs Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Singular Mark 14:12 1
ἐφάγετε ephágete Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural John 6:26 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5315, 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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