Greek word · G2668
καταπλέω
katapleō
to sail
Literally 'sail down'. In Greek seafaring speech, a ship 'went up' (anagō) when it left land for open water and 'sailed down' (katapleō) when it came in from open water to a harbour or shore. So: to put in, to land, to make port.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
Literally 'sail down'. In Greek seafaring speech, a ship 'went up' (anagō) when it left land for open water and 'sailed down' (katapleō) when it came in from open water to a harbour or shore. So: to put in, to land, to make port.
- Against the English
BSB, ESV, NASB and NIV say 'sailed to', which is accurate but loses the sense of arrival. KJV, WEB and NLT say 'arrived', which catches the landing but drops the boat. YLT's 'sailed down' is the most literal, but in English it could suggest sailing downstream or southward, which the Greek does not mean.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Common in classical and Hellenistic Greek for ships putting in to port (Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius), and used the same way in papyri about river and sea travel. Luke uses the matching verb anagō for setting out to sea several times in Acts (e.g. Acts 13:13; 27:2) and in Luke 8:22 for this same crossing.
Where it appears
Luke · 1
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Luke 8:26 κατέπλευσαν they sailed down
Then they sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, across the lake from Galilee.
Here: A sailor's word for coming in from open water to land. It matches 8:22, where they 'put out' (literally 'went up') from shore. The storm crossing is now over and the boat is coming in to the far shore. This is the only place the verb appears in the New Testament.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.