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φέρω

to carry

‘to carry’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓

G5342 Strong's Greek
phérō Transliteration
/fer'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 68 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.

φερω (phérō) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to carry.” Ranging over 5 senses, it is not a single-sense word. It turns up in 61 verses across 12 books, a moderately common footprint. It concentrates in Mark, which alone accounts for 25% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Matthew 7:18. 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
be
Modern gloss
to carry
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G5342 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 →

61
distinct verses
The word appears in 61 distinct verses.
12 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 12 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 7:18
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 7:18.
Revelation 21:26
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 21:26.
#243
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 243 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 61 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 36 · 59%
  • Acts 10 · 16%
  • Pauline Epistles 2 · 3%
  • General Epistles 11 · 18%
  • Revelation 2 · 3%

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 61 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 36 verses · 59%
  • Johannine 16 verses · 26%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 14 verses · 23%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 6 verses · 10%
  • Hebrews 5 verses · 8%
  • Pauline corpus 2 verses · 3%
  • Revelation 2 verses · 3%

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: Bring 8×, Brought 8×, Bringing 3×
  • American Standard Version: Bring 11×, Brought 6×, Bear 3×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Bring 9×, Brought 8×, They brought 3×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Bring 11×, Bringing 6×, Brought 5×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G5342 across 65 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bring” 8×
  • “Brought” 8×
  • “Bringing” 3×
  • “Came” 3×
  • “They bring” 3×
  • “They brought” 3×
  • “Bear” 2×
  • “Bringeth forth” 2×

Plus 33 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.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G5342 across 65 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bring” 11×
  • “Brought” 6×
  • “Bear” 3×
  • “Beareth” 3×
  • “Bringing” 3×
  • “They bring” 3×
  • “They brought” 3×

Plus 33 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 G5342 across 64 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bring” 9×
  • “Brought” 8×
  • “They brought” 3×
  • “Bear” 2×
  • “Bearing” 2×
  • “Bringing” 2×

Plus 38 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.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G5342 across 75 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bring” 11×
  • “Bringing” 6×
  • “Brought” 5×
  • “It” 4×
  • “Bears” 3×
  • “They bring” 3×
  • “Bearing” 2×
  • “Carry” 2×
  • “Having been brought” 2×

Plus 37 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.

  1. to carry some burden
  2. to move by bearing; move or, to be conveyed or borne, with the suggestion of force or speed
  3. to bear up i.e. uphold (keep from falling)
  4. to bear, i.e. endure, to endure the rigour of a thing, to bear patiently one's conduct, or spare one (abstain from…
  5. to bring, bring to, bring forward

Word origin

Origin: "a primary verb (for which other and apparently not cognate ones are used in certain tenses only, namely, oio oy'-o; and enegko en-eng'-ko)"

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 09:56,1

A primary verb (for which other and apparently not cognate ones are used in certain tenses only; namely οἴω oiō̄̄ and ἐνέγκω enegkō̄ to bear or carry (in a very wide application literally and figuratively : - be bear bring (forth) carry come + let her drive be driven endure go on lay lead move reach rushing uphold.

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


Forms in the corpus

The 34 distinct written forms G5342 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
φέρουσιν phérousin Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 7:32 6
φέρετε phérete Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Mark 9:19 5
ἤνεγκεν ḗnenken Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 14:11 5
φέροντες phérontes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Mark 2:3 4
ἔφερον épheron Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 1:32 4
φέρε phére Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular John 20:27 3
φέρει phérei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular John 12:24 3
φέρετέ phéreté Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 14:18 3
ἤνεγκαν ḗnenkan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 9:20 3
φέρειν phérein Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive Luke 23:26 2
φέρητε phérēte Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural John 15:8 2
φέρον phéron Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Neuter John 15:2 2
φέρων phérōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine John 19:39 2
ἐνέγκας enénkas Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Acts 5:2 2
ἐνεγκεῖν enenkeîn Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Matthew 7:18 2
ἠνέχθη ēnéchthē Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 14:11 2
οἴσει oísei Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular John 21:18 1
οἴσουσιν oísousin Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Revelation 21:26 1
φέρεσθαι phéresthai Verb, Present, Passive, Infinitive Hebrews 9:16 1
φέρουσαι phérousai Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Feminine Luke 24:1 1
φέρουσαν phérousan Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Feminine Acts 12:10 1
φέρῃ phérē Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular John 15:2 1
φερομένην pheroménēn Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Feminine 1 Peter 1:13 1
φερομένης pheroménēs Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Feminine Acts 2:2 1
φερόμενοι pherómenoi Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 2 Peter 1:21 1
φερώμεθα pherṓmetha Verb, Present, Passive, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural Hebrews 6:1 1
ἐνέγκαι enénkai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Mark 6:27 1
ἐνέγκατε enénkate Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural John 21:10 1
ἐνεχθείσης enechtheísēs Verb, Aorist, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Feminine 2 Peter 1:17 1
ἐνεχθεῖσαν enechtheîsan Verb, Aorist, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Feminine 2 Peter 1:18 1
ἐφέροντο ephéronto Verb, Imperfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Acts 27:17 1
ἐφερόμεθα epherómetha Verb, Imperfect, Passive, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Acts 27:15 1
ἔφερεν épheren Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 4:8 1
ἤνεγκα ḗnenka Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Mark 9:17 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5342, 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.

Derived from this word

Proper names from this root

People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word φερω appears 234 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 213 verses in 30 books.

234
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
213
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
30 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 30 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G5342) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 213. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G5342) 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.

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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