Word study

Sir

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: sir, sirs. 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 “sir” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אָדוֹן âdônlordtranslated this way 3 times of its 320 uses · Strong’s H113Noun  ·  Translated: lord 174, master 94, master's 25, lord's 6

    Genesis 23:6 “Listen to us, sir. You are God’s chosen one among us. Bury your dead in the finest of our tombs. None of us will withhold his tomb for burying your dead.”

    Genesis 31:35 Rachel said to her father, “Sir, do not be angry that I cannot stand up before you; for I am having my period.” So Laban searched but could not find the household idols.

    Full study and all 282 verses →
  • בִּי bîI pray, excuse metranslated this way 1 time of its 11 uses · Strong’s H994Preposition  ·  Translated: Please 9, Sir 1, o 1

    Genesis 44:18 Then Judah approached Joseph and said, “Sir, please let your servant speak personally to my lord. Do not be angry with your servant, for you are equal to Pharaoh himself.

    Full study and all 11 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • κύριος kýrioslord, Lord, master, sirtranslated this way 15 times of its 713 uses · Strong’s G2962Noun  ·  Translated: Lord 549, of 55, master 42, Lord's 18

    Matthew 13:27 The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

    Luke 13:8 ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone again this year, until I dig around it and fertilize it.

    Full study and all 658 verses →
  • ἐγώ egṓItranslated this way 1 time of its 2,450 uses · Strong’s G1473Personal / Possessive Pronoun  ·  Translated: me 622, my 472, i 392, us 267Full study and all 1,768 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.