βρῶμα

τροφή trophḗ · G5160 · food

βρῶμα and τροφή (“nourishment”) both denote food or sustenance. βρῶμα additionally carries a more specific sense of solid food, flesh, or meat, often with ceremonial or legal associations, while τροφή remains the more general term for nourishment — a real but narrow difference within their shared core sense of food.

διατροφή diatrophḗ · G1305 · food

While βρῶμα refers to food as concrete substance (often with attention to ritual permissibility), διατροφή denotes nourishment as the sustaining process or provision itself. The single attestation of διατροφή limits verification of full interchangeability across registers, though both terms occupy the core semantic space of sustenance and feeding.

ἐπισιτισμός episitismós · G1979 · food

While ἐπισιτισμός emphasizes the act or process of provisioning (supplies, victuals), βρῶμα denotes the concrete edible substance itself. Both terms refer to sustenance and provisions.

χόρτασμα chórtasma · G5527 · food

χόρτασμα denotes provision or sustenance in a generic sense (attested once), while βρῶμα denotes food items as objects of consumption, particularly in contexts involving Jewish ceremonial law distinctions between permitted and forbidden foods.

אֹכֶל ʼôkel · H400 · food, provisions

אֹכֶל (ʼôkel, H400) is the standard Hebrew noun for food, eating, and meals, and it corresponds directly to βρῶμα (brōma, G1033), the Greek noun for food, in both everyday and ceremonial or dietary-law contexts. The two function as the primary lexical choice for “food” in their respective languages and are regularly paired in Septuagint translation.

מַאֲכָל maʼăkâl · H3978 · food

מַאֲכָל (maʼăkâl, H3978) is the direct Hebrew equivalent, denoting food in its general, literal sense (including meat and fruit), while βρῶμα (brōma, G1033) carries the same core denotation but was more frequently used in NT contexts involving ceremonial food regulations (clean/unclean distinctions under Jewish law).

בִּרְיָה biryâh · H1279 · food

Hebrew בִּרְיָה specifically denotes meat as food, while Greek βρῶμα encompasses food more broadly (including both literal sustenance and figurative sense, with ceremonial law implications); the Hebrew term represents a semantic subset focused on the meat category.

Food5.1

Used generally of nourishment, as of the disciples' concern that the crowd has no food in Matthew 14:15 and Jesus' declaration that His food is to do the will of the Father in John 4:34.

Solid food, meat, flesh5.7

Used specifically of solid food as opposed to drink, as of the food that goes into the stomach and is eliminated in Mark 7:19 and the one who has food sharing with the one who has none in Luke 3:11.

Words formed from the same root. They share a form, not always a meaning.

Meanings adapted from the UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament, © United Bible Societies, CC BY-SA 4.0 and the UBS Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (from the Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew), © United Bible Societies, CC BY-SA 4.0; MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets, available at https://github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-greek/, licensed CC BY 4.0; MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets © 2022-2024 by Biblica, Inc., CC BY 4.0. Westminster Leningrad Codex (tanach.us). OpenScriptures Hebrew Bible morphology (hb.openscriptures.org), CC BY 4.0.