ψεῦδος
lie
‘lie’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Accusative-case word in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
1 verse where G5579 appears in the Nominative case in the Book of Revelation. 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.
Revelation
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.
ψευδος — transliterated pseûdos — is a Greek noun carrying the sense “lie.” Debuting at John 8:44, it then recurs through the corpus. With 10 verses in 6 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Revelation (30% of all occurrences). Thayer's distinguishes 3 senses for it. See the sense tree, 10-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G5579 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,056
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,056 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 3 verses 30%
- 2 Thessalonians 2 verses 20%
- 1 John 2 verses 20%
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 10 distinct verses.
- Johannine 6 verses · 60%
- Pauline corpus 4 verses · 40%
- Revelation 3 verses · 30%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 2 verses · 20%
- Gospels 1 verse · 10%
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: Lie 6×, Lying 2×
- American Standard Version: Lie 7×
- Berean Standard Bible: Lie 5×, Falsehood 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Lie 6×, Falsehood 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G5579 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G5579 across 9 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 G5579 across 9 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G5579 across 10 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.
- a lie
- conscious and intentional falsehood
- in a broad sense, whatever is not what it seems to be
Word origin
Derived from ψευδομαι (pseúdomai) (G5574) — to lie.
From G5574 ; a falsehood : - lie lying.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G5579 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ψεῦδος pseûdos | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | John 8:44 | 7 |
| ψεύδει pseúdei | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Romans 1:25 | 2 |
| ψεύδους pseúdous | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | 2 Thessalonians 2:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5579, 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
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ψευδος appears 25 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 23 verses in 11 books.
- 25
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 23
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Job 16:8 ψεῦδος
- Psalms 4:3 ψεῦδος
- Proverbs 9:12 ψεῦδος
- Isaiah 28:15 ψεῦδος
- Jeremiah 3:10 ψεῦδος
- Ezekiel 33:31 ψεῦδος
- Daniel 8:25 ψεῦδος
- Hosea 4:2 ψεῦδος
- Micah 2:11 ψεῦδος
- Zechariah 5:4 ψεῦδος
- Malachi 3:5 ψεῦδος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G5579) 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.
- Job 16:8 ψεῦδος You have shriveled me up. This is a witness against me. My leanness rises up against me, It testifies to my face.
- Psalms 4:3 ψεῦδος But know that Yahweh has set apart for himself him who is godly: Yahweh will hear when I call to him.
- Psalms 5:7 ψεῦδος But as for me, in the abundance of your loving kindness I will come into your house: I will bow toward your holy temple in reverence of you.
- Proverbs 9:12 ψεῦδος If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you mock, you alone will bear it.
- Proverbs 24:22 ψεύδος For their calamity will rise suddenly; The destruction from them both--who knows?
- Isaiah 28:15 ψεῦδος Because you have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come to us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:
- Isaiah 28:17 ψεῦδος I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet; and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place.
- Isaiah 30:12 ψεῦδος Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, "Because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and rely thereon;
- Isaiah 44:20 ψεῦδος He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside; and he can't deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?
- Jeremiah 3:10 ψεῦδος Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not returned to me with her whole heart, but only in pretense, says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 3:23 ψεῦδος Truly in vain is [the help that is looked for] from the hills, the tumult on the mountains: truly in Yahweh our God is the salvation of Israel.
- Jeremiah 9:2 ψεῦδος Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
- Jeremiah 44:14 ψεῦδος so that none of the remnant of Judah, who have gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall escape or be left, to return into the land of Judah, to which they have a desire to return to dwell there: for none shall return save such as shall escape.
- Jeremiah 50:2 ψεῦδος Declare you among the nations and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and don't conceal: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is disappointed, Merodach is dismayed; her images are disappointed, her idols are dismayed.
- Ezekiel 33:31 ψεῦδος They come to you as the people comes, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but don't do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their gain.
- Daniel 8:25 ψεῦδος Through his policy he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and in [their] security shall he destroy many: he shall also stand up against the prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.
- Daniel 11:23 ψεῦδος After the league made with him he shall work deceitfully; for he shall come up, and shall become strong, with a small people.
- Hosea 4:2 ψεῦδος There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; They break boundaries, and bloodshed causes bloodshed.
- Hosea 7:3 ψεῦδος They make the king glad with their wickedness, And the princes with their lies.
- Hosea 12:1 ψεῦδος Ephraim feeds on wind, And chases the east wind. He continually multiplies lies and desolation. They make a covenant with Assyria, And oil is carried into Egypt.
- Micah 2:11 ψεῦδος If a man walking in a spirit of falsehood lies: 'I will prophesy to you of wine and of strong drink;' He would be the prophet of this people.
- Zechariah 5:4 ψεῦδος I will cause it to go out," says Yahweh of Hosts, "and it will enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him who swears falsely by my name; and it will remain in the midst of his house, and will destroy it with its timber and its stones."
- Malachi 3:5 ψεῦδος I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don't fear me," says Yahweh of Hosts.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G5579) 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.
