Greek word · G4216
ποταμοφόρητος
potamophorētos
flooded
Literally 'river-borne, carried off by a river.' It describes what happens to something caught in a current: soil, crops, buildings or people dragged away by moving water.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
ποταμο-φόρητος, -ον
carried away by a stream:
Revelation 12:15 (for two exx. in π., see MM, xxi).†
(AS)
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of Revelation 12:15
- Range of meaning
Literally 'river-borne, carried off by a river.' It describes what happens to something caught in a current: soil, crops, buildings or people dragged away by moving water.
- Against the English
KJV 'carried away of the flood,' YLT 'carried away by the river,' WEB 'by the stream,' BSB/NIV 'sweep her away in/with the torrent.' All are accurate. Renderings with 'drown' (NLT) narrow the picture: the Greek is about being swept off and carried away, with drowning only implied.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Used nowhere else in the New Testament or the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament). Moulton–Milligan and BDAG cite its use in Egyptian papyri for land 'washed away by the river,' meaning farmland lost to the Nile flood. So it was an ordinary, practical word, not invented poetry.
Similar words
Where it appears
Revelation · 1
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Revelation 12:15 ποταμοφόρητον carried away by a flood
Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river to overtake the woman and sweep her away in the torrent.
Here: A rare compound, 'river-carried': something the current has picked up and carried off. It appears only here in the New Testament.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.