ναῦς

πλοῖον ploîon · G4143 · boat, ship

The most common Greek NT word for a boat or ship (appearing ~68 times), fully interchangeable with ναῦς in referring to watercraft. The two words are exact synonyms, with πλοῖον being far more frequent in the NT corpus while ναῦς appears only once (Acts 27:41).

πλοιάριον ploiárion · G4142 · small boat

Diminutive form of πλοῖον, specifically denoting a small boat or skiff. While ναῦς can refer to boats of any size, πλοιάριον emphasizes a smaller vessel, making it a partial synonym with semantic narrowing to smaller craft.

אֳנִיָּה ʼŏnîyâh · H591 · ship, boats of reeds

Standard Hebrew term for a ship or vessel; the most common translation equivalent in the LXX for Greek ναῦς and πλοῖον. Used in contexts like Jonah 1:3-5 and Proverbs 30:19.

צִי tsîy · H6716 · ship, wild animals

צִי (tsîy, H6716) is a Hebrew term for a ship or fleet, particularly in poetic contexts (for example Isaiah 33:21 and Numbers 24:24). It is less common than אֳנִיָּה but is used for sea-going vessels.

Ship6.43

Describing the shipwreck off Malta, Acts 27:41 states “But they struck a reef where two seas met and ran the ship aground; and the prow stuck firmly and remained immovable, while the stern started to break up due to the force of the waves,” where “ship” translates this term for the vessel itself.

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.