Word study

Really

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “really”. 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 “really” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אַף aphalso, yeatranslated this way 4 times of its 110 uses · Strong’s H637Conjunction  ·  Translated: and 12, indeed 10, much more 9, much less 7

    Genesis 18:13 And the LORD asked Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Can I really bear a child when I am old?’

    Job 40:8 Would you really annul My justice? Would you condemn Me to justify yourself?

    Full study and all 102 verses →
  • הָיָה hâyâhfall out, come to pass, become, betranslated this way 3 times of its 2,848 uses · Strong’s H1961Verb  ·  Translated: will be 206, become 178, came 169, was 151Full study and all 2,573 verses →
  • זֶה zehthis, thattranslated this way 2 times of its 984 uses · Strong’s H2088Pronoun  ·  Translated: this 478, in this 42, these 39, of this 27

    Genesis 27:21 Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come closer so I can touch you, my son. Are you really my son Esau, or not?”

    Genesis 27:24 Again he asked, “Are you really my son Esau?” And he replied, “I am.”

    Full study and all 913 verses →
  • עַיִן ayineyetranslated this way 2 times of its 764 uses · Strong’s H5869Noun  ·  Translated: eyes 383, sight 186, eye 38, presence 13

    2 Samuel 10:3 the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun their lord, “Just because David has sent you comforters, do you really believe he is showing respect for your father? Has not David instead sent his servants to explore the city, spy it out, and overthrow it?”

    Full study and all 731 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.