φιλοτιμέομαι
to love honor
‘to love honor’ 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
- Middle or Passive deponent
- Middle/passive in form but active in meaning.
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”).
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 time (33%)
- Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Infinitive 1 time (33%)
- Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 3 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G5389 appears — 3 distinct verses across 3 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.
Romans 1 verse
2 Corinthians 1 verse
1 Thessalonians 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 love honor” is the headline sense of the Greek verb φιλοτιμεομαι (philotiméomai). It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. It concentrates in Romans, which alone accounts for 33% of its uses. First canonically at Romans 15:20, it enters the text early. Lexicons map it across 3 senses. See the sense tree, 3-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G5389 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,203
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,203 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Romans 1 verse 33%
- 2 Corinthians 1 verse 33%
- 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 33%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 3 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: Have i strived 1×, We labour 1×, Ye study 1×
- American Standard Version: Making it my aim 1×, We make it our aim 1×, Ye study 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Aspire 1×, I have aspired 1×, We aspire 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Counting it honor 1×, Strive 1×, We aspire 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G5389 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G5389 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G5389 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G5389 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 be actuated by love of honour
- from a love of honour to strive to bring something to pass
- to strive earnestly, make it one's aim
Word origin
Derived from φιλος (phílos) (G5384) — friend.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G5389 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| φιλοτιμεῖσθαι philotimeîsthai | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Infinitive | 1 Thessalonians 4:11 | 1 |
| φιλοτιμούμεθα philotimoúmetha | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Plural | 2 Corinthians 5:9 | 1 |
| φιλοτιμούμενον philotimoúmenon | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Romans 15:20 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5389, 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
- φιλαγαθος philágathos G5358 loving goodness
- φιλαδελφος philádelphos G5361 loving brother
- φιλανδρος phílandros G5362 loving husband
- φιλανθρωπως philanthrṓpōs G5364 humanely
- φιλαργυρος philárgyros G5366 money-loving
- φιλαυτος phílautos G5367 self-loving
- φιλεω philéō G5368 to love
- φιληδονος philḗdonos G5369 pleasure-loving
- φιλια philía G5373 friendship
- φιλονεικος philóneikos G5380 contentious
- φιλοξενος philóxenos G5382 hospitable
- φιλοπρωτευω philoprōteúō G5383 to desire first place
- φιλοσοφος philósophos G5386 philosopher
- φιλοστοργος philóstorgos G5387 affection
- φιλοτεκνος philóteknos G5388 loving children
- φιλοφρων philóphrōn G5391 friendly
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- Φιλιππος Phílippos G5376 Philip
- φιλοθεος philótheos G5377 God-loving
- Φιλολογος Philólogos G5378 Philologus
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 21 — not the complete family. 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
