ἀφροσύνη
foolishness
also: folly, senselessness fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Dative-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
- 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.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
2 verses where G877 appears in the Dative case in the Book of 2 Corinthians. 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.
2 Corinthians
- 2 Corinthians 11:17 ἀφροσύνῃ n dat sg fem That which I speak, I don't speak according to the Lord, but as in foolishness, in this confidence of boasting.
- 2 Corinthians 11:21 ἀφροσύνῃ n dat sg fem I speak by way of disparagement, as though we had been weak. Yet however any is bold (I speak in foolishness), I am bold also.
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 noun αφροσυνη centers on the idea of “foolishness.” It occurs a mere 4 verses across Scripture. 2 Corinthians dominates its distribution — 3 of 4 verses. Its earliest occurrence is Mark 7:22. Lexicons map it across 2 senses — beyond “foolishness” it also covers “folly” and “senselessness”. Dig into 4-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G877 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,877
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,877 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Corinthians 3 verses 75%
- Mark 1 verse 25%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 3 verses · 75%
- Gospels 1 verse · 25%
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: Folly 1×, Foolishness 1×
- American Standard Version: Foolishness 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Fool 2×, Foolishness 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Foolishness 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G877 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G877 across 5 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G877 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G877 across 4 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.
Senses in Thayer's
The 2 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.
- foolishness, folly, senselessness
- thoughtlessness, recklessness
Word origin
Derived from αφρων (áphrōn) (G878) — foolish.
From G878 ; senselessness that is (euphemistically) egotism ; (morally) recklessness : - folly foolishly (-ness).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G877 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀφροσύνῃ aphrosýnē | Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine | 2 Corinthians 11:17 | 2 |
| ἀφροσύνη aphrosýnē | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | Mark 7:22 | 1 |
| ἀφροσύνης aphrosýnēs | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | 2 Corinthians 11:1 | 1 |
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αφροσυνη appears 26 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 26 verses in 9 books.
- 26
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 26
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Deuteronomy 22:21 ἀφροσύνη
- Judges 19:23 ἀφροσύνη
- 1 Samuel 25:25 ἀφροσύνη
- 2 Samuel 13:12 ἀφροσύνη
- Job 1:22 ἀφροσύνη
- Psalms 37:6 ἀφροσύνη
- Proverbs 5:5 ἀφροσύνη
- Ecclesiastes 2:3 ἀφροσύνη
- Lamentations 2:14 ἀφροσύνη
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G877) 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.
- Deuteronomy 22:21 ἀφροσύνη then they shall bring out the young lady to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done folly in Israel, to play the prostitute in her father's house: so shall you put away the evil from the midst of you.
- Judges 19:23 ἀφροσύνη The man, the master of the house, went out to them, and said to them, No, my brothers, please don't act so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into my house, don't do this folly.
- Judges 19:24 ἀφροσύνη Behold, here is my daughter a virgin, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble you them, and do with them what seems good to you: but to this man don't do any such folly.
- 1 Samuel 25:25 ἀφροσύνη Please don't let my lord regard this worthless fellow, even Nabal; for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him: but I your handmaid didn't see the young men of my lord, whom you did send.
- 2 Samuel 13:12 ἀφροσύνη She answered him, No, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel. Don't you do this folly.
- Job 1:22 ἀφροσύνη In all this, Job did not sin, nor charge God with wrongdoing.
- Job 4:6 ἀφροσύνη Isn't your piety your confidence, The integrity of your ways your hope?
- Psalms 37:6 ἀφροσύνη He will make your righteousness go forth as the light, And your justice as the noon day sun.
- Psalms 68:6 ἀφροσύνη God sets the lonely in families. He brings out the prisoners with singing, But the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land.
- Proverbs 5:5 ἀφροσύνη Her feet go down to death. Her steps lead straight to Sheol.
- Proverbs 5:23 ἀφροσύνη He will die for lack of instruction. In the greatness of his folly, he will go astray.
- Proverbs 9:6 ἀφροσύνη Leave your simple ways, and live. Walk in the way of understanding."
- Proverbs 18:2 ἀφροσύνη A fool has no delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own opinion.
- Proverbs 18:13 ἀφροσύνη He who gives answer before he hears, That is folly and shame to him.
- Proverbs 19:3 ἀφροσύνη The foolishness of man subverts his way; His heart rages against Yahweh.
- Proverbs 26:4 ἀφροσύνη Don't answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.
- Proverbs 26:5 ἀφροσύνη Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.
- Proverbs 27:22 ἀφροσύνη Though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with grain, Yet his foolishness will not be removed from him.
- Ecclesiastes 2:3 ἀφροσύνη I searched in my heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, my heart yet guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold of folly, until I might see what it was good for the sons of men that they should do under heaven all the days of their lives.
- Ecclesiastes 2:12 ἀφροσύνη I turned myself to consider wisdom, madness, and folly: for what can the king's successor do? Just that which has been done long ago.
- Ecclesiastes 2:13 ἀφροσύνη Then I saw that wisdom excels folly, as far as light excels darkness.
- Ecclesiastes 7:25 ἀφροσύνη I turned around, and my heart sought to know and to search out, and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity, and that foolishness is madness.
- Ecclesiastes 9:17 ἀφροσύνη The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the cry of him who rules among fools.
- Ecclesiastes 10:1 ἀφροσύνη Dead flies cause the oil of the perfumer to send forth an evil odor; so does a little folly outweigh wisdom and honor.
- Ecclesiastes 10:3 ἀφροσύνη Yes also, when the fool walks by the way, his understanding fails him, and he says to everyone that he is a fool.
- Lamentations 2:14 ἀφροσύνη Your prophets have seen for you false and foolish visions; They have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back your captivity, But have seen for you false oracles and causes of banishment.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G877) 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.
