Word study

Haughty

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “haughty”. English often uses one word where Hebrew or Greek has several, each with its own shade of meaning. Under each word are verses where it is translated this way; choose the word itself for its full study: every verse, how else it is translated, the forms it takes and what the dictionaries say.

At a glance

How often each original word is translated “haughty” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רוּם rûmbe high, exalted, risetranslated this way 5 times of its 185 uses · Strong’s H7311Verb  ·  Translated: exalted 23, exalt 18, lift 14, raised 10

    2 Samuel 22:28 You save an afflicted people, but Your eyes are on the haughty to bring them down.

    Psalm 18:27 For You save an afflicted people, but You humble those with haughty eyes.

    Full study and all 180 verses →
  • גָּבַהּ gâbahhbe high, exaltedtranslated this way 3 times of its 34 uses · Strong’s H1361Verb  ·  Translated: proud 4, high 4, soar 2, haughty 2

    Isaiah 3:16 The LORD also says: “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty — walking with heads held high and wanton eyes, prancing and skipping as they go, jingling the bracelets on their ankles —

    Ezekiel 16:50 Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them, as you have seen.

    Full study and all 33 verses →
  • גָּבֹהַּ gâbôahhhigh, exaltedtranslated this way 2 times of its 40 uses · Strong’s H1364Adjective  ·  Translated: high 20, proud 3, haughty 2, longer 2

    Job 41:34 He looks down on all the haughty; he is king over all the proud.”

    Psalm 101:5 Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, I will put to silence; the one with haughty eyes and a proud heart, I will not endure.

    Full study and all 36 verses →
  • גֹּבַהּ gôbahhheighttranslated this way 1 time of its 17 uses · Strong’s H1363Noun  ·  Translated: height 4, high 4, pride 2

    Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

    Full study and all 16 verses →
  • רוּם rûmheight, haughtinesstranslated this way 1 time of its 6 uses · Strong’s H7312Noun  ·  Translated: loftiness 2, Haughty 1, high 1, proud 1

    Proverbs 21:4 Haughty eyes and a proud heart— the guides of the wicked— are sin.

    Full study and all 6 verses →
How to study a word well
  1. Start from the verse, not the dictionary. Find which Hebrew or Greek word stands in the verse you are studying. One English word often translates several different original words.
  2. Read every place the word is used. A word means what its writers used it to mean. The list of verses and the count by book show its range, and who uses it most.
  3. Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
  4. Notice the form. A command is not a statement, and a passive verb is something done to the subject. The form in your verse is part of the meaning.
  5. See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
  6. Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
  7. Come back to the verse. Context decides. A word does not carry every one of its meanings into every verse, and where a word came from does not settle what it means in a sentence written centuries later.

Scripture text and translation counts: Berean Standard Bible. Full entry: Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906, public domain), in the digital edition Brown-Driver-Briggs Enhanced by unfoldingWord (Joel Ruark, J. de Joode), based on data by Eliran Wong and Stephen Ku; its additions are used under CC BY 4.0. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, CC BY 4.0. Hebrew-to-English verse numbering: original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb, CC BY 4.0. We reformatted the data, linked the references to this site’s Bible text and left out words in other scripts that the source holds only as images. These are historical reference works; an entry gives its authors’ view, and a word’s meaning in any verse depends on how it is used there.