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ἀπόλλυμι

to destroy

‘to destroy’ is one of 7 main senses fuller range ↓

G622 Strong's Greek
apóllymi Transliteration
/ap-ol'-loo-mee/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 90 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.

απολλυμι (apóllymi) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to destroy.” Ranging over 7 senses, it is not a single-sense word. It turns up in 84 verses across 16 books, a moderately common footprint. It concentrates in Luke, which alone accounts for 29% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Matthew 2:13. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
destroy
Modern gloss
to destroy
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 G622 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 →

84
distinct verses
The word appears in 84 distinct verses.
16 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 16 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 2:13
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 2:13.
Revelation 18:14
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 18:14.
#194
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 194 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 84 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 60 · 71%
  • Acts 2 · 2%
  • Pauline Epistles 12 · 14%
  • General Epistles 9 · 11%
  • Revelation 1 · 1%

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 84 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 60 verses · 71%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 26 verses · 31%
  • Johannine 12 verses · 14%
  • Pauline corpus 12 verses · 14%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 8 verses · 10%
  • Hebrews 1 verse · 1%
  • Revelation 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: Destroy 15×, Perish 15×, Shall lose 8×
  • American Standard Version: Destroy 13×, Perish 12×, Perished 7×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Destroy 8×, Loses 7×, Lost 6×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Destroy 11×, Perish 9×, Perishing 6×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G622 across 100 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Destroy” 15×
  • “Perish” 15×
  • “Shall lose” 8×
  • “Destroyed” 5×
  • “Lost” 5×
  • “Perished” 4×
  • “Should perish” 4×
  • “Lose” 3×
  • “Perisheth” 3×
  • “Shall perish” 3×
  • “They might destroy” 3×
  • “Was lost” 3×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 14 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 G622 across 95 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Destroy” 13×
  • “Perish” 12×
  • “Perished” 7×
  • “Shall lose” 7×
  • “Destroyed” 5×
  • “Lost” 4×
  • “Perisheth” 4×
  • “Lose” 3×
  • “Shall perish” 3×
  • “Should perish” 3×
  • “They might destroy” 3×
  • “He shall” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 23 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 G622 across 90 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Destroy” 8×
  • “Loses” 7×
  • “Lost” 6×
  • “Will lose” 6×
  • “Kill” 5×
  • “Are perishing” 3×
  • “Destroyed” 3×
  • “Lose” 3×
  • “Perish” 3×
  • “We are perishing” 3×
  • “Will be ruined” 3×
  • “He will never lose” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 24 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 G622 across 106 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Destroy” 11×
  • “Perish” 9×
  • “Perishing” 6×
  • “Will lose” 6×
  • “Perished” 5×
  • “Lose” 4×
  • “Loses” 4×
  • “Lost” 4×
  • “Destroyed” 3×
  • “He will” 3×
  • “They might destroy” 3×
  • “We are perishing” 3×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 23 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


7 senses in Thayer's, in lexicon order

The 7 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 put out of the way entirely, abolish, put an end to ruin
  2. render useless
  3. to kill
  4. to declare that one must be put to death
  5. metaph. to devote or give over to eternal misery in hell
  6. to perish, to be lost, ruined, destroyed
  7. to lose

Word origin

Derived from απο (apó) (G575) — from.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 07:34,7

From G575 and the base of G3639 ; to destroy fully (reflexively to perish or lose ) literally or figuratively : - destroy die lose mar perish.

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


Forms in the corpus

The 33 distinct written forms G622 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἀπολέσει apolései Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 10:39 10
ἀπολέσαι apolésai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Matthew 2:13 7
ἀπολέσῃ apolésē Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 10:42 7
ἀπόληται apólētai Verb, Aorist, Middle, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 5:29 7
ἀπολέσωσιν apolésōsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 12:14 4
ἀπολλυμένοις apollyménois Verb, Present, Middle or Passive, Participle, Dative, Plural, Masculine 1 Corinthians 1:18 4
ἀπολοῦνται apoloûntai Verb, Future, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 26:52 4
ἀπώλεσεν apṓlesen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 22:7 4
ἀπώλετο apṓleto Verb, Aorist, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular John 17:12 4
ἀπώλοντο apṓlonto Verb, Aorist, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 Corinthians 10:10 4
ἀπολέσας apolésas Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 10:39 3
ἀπολλύμεθα apollýmetha Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Matthew 8:25 3
ἀπολωλός apolōlós Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Luke 15:4 3
ἀπολέσθαι apolésthai Verb, Aorist, Middle, Infinitive Luke 13:33 2
ἀπολεῖσθε apoleîsthe Verb, Future, Middle, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Luke 13:3 2
ἀπολωλότα apolōlóta Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Neuter Matthew 10:6 2
ἀπολωλὼς apolōlṑs Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Luke 15:24 2
ἀπόλλυται apóllytai Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 2:22 2
ἀπώλεσα apṓlesa Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Luke 15:9 2
ἀπολέσητε apolésēte Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural 2 John 1:8 1
ἀπολέσω apolésō Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Singular John 6:39 1
ἀπολεῖται apoleîtai Verb, Future, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Acts 27:34 1
ἀπολλυμένην apollyménēn Verb, Present, Middle, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Feminine John 6:27 1
ἀπολλυμένου apollyménou Verb, Present, Middle, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Neuter 1 Peter 1:7 1
ἀπολλύει apollýei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular John 12:25 1
ἀπολλύμενοι apollýmenoi Verb, Present, Middle or Passive, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 2 Corinthians 4:9 1
ἀπολομένου apoloménou Verb, Aorist, Middle, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Masculine Luke 11:51 1
ἀπολῶ apolō̂ Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 Corinthians 1:19 1
ἀπόλλυε apóllye Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Romans 14:15 1
ἀπόλλυμαι apóllymai Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Luke 15:17 1
ἀπόλλυνται apóllyntai Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 9:17 1
ἀπόλωνται apólōntai Verb, Aorist, Middle, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural John 10:28 1
ἀπώλλυντο apṓllynto Verb, Imperfect, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 Corinthians 10:9 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G622, 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

+85 more words share this root (not shown).

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 114 — 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 απολλυμι appears 278 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 270 verses in 28 books.

278
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
270
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
28 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 28 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G622) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 270. 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 (G622) 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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