Word study

Unit

1 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: united, unit, units, unites, uniting. 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 “unit” or one of its forms.

Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אֶחָד echâdonetranslated this way 4 times of its 855 uses · Strong’s H259Number  ·  Translated: one 278, first 43, and one 43, a 36

    Exodus 26:6 Make fifty gold clasps as well, and join the curtains together with the clasps, so that the tabernacle will be a unit.

    Exodus 26:11 Make fifty bronze clasps and put them through the loops to join the tent together as a unit.

    Full study and all 688 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • κολλάω kolláōI glue, cleave, keep company withtranslated this way 3 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s G2853Verb  ·  Translated: join 2, unites 2

    Matthew 19:5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?

    1 Corinthians 6:16 Or don’t you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”

    Full study and all 12 verses →
  • προσκολλάω proskolláōI join closely, cleave totranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s G4347Verb  ·  Translated: united 2

    Mark 10:7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,

    Ephesians 5:31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • εἷς heîsonetranslated this way 2 times of its 312 uses · Strong’s G1520Adjective  ·  Translated: one 223, a 16, single 13, first 9

    John 17:23 I in them and You in Me — that they may be perfectly united, so that the world may know that You sent Me and have loved them just as You have loved Me.

    Full study and all 267 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.