1. city, town — A city, town, or populated urban center -- the standard and overwhelmingly dominant sense of polis in the NT with 165 occurrences. Used for named cities (Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum, Ephesus, Philippi, etc.), for generic references to cities and towns visited during Jesus's ministry and the apostolic missions, and for the eschatological 'holy city' (Rev 21-22). Covers all grammatical forms: nominative polis, accusative polin, genitive poleos, dative polei, and plurals poleis/polesin/poleon. The auto-clustered groups split by grammatical case (genitive 'of city,' nominative plural 'cities') and by proper-noun usage ('Polis' in compound names like Hierapolis) do not represent genuinely distinct senses -- polis as part of the compound place-name Hierapolis (Col 4:13) and as the common noun for 'city' in Acts 16:11-14 share the same lexical meaning. Multilingual glosses are completely uniform: Hebrew ir/arim, Arabic madina/mudun, German Stadt/Stadte, Korean dosi/seong, Spanish ciudad/ciudades, French ville/villes. 165×
AR["-","المَدينَةِ","الْمَدِينَةِ","مَدينَةٍ","مَدينَةِ","مَدينَتَهُم","مَدِينَةٌ","مَدِينَةٍ","مَدِينَةُ"]·ben["নগর","নগরে","নগরের","শহর","শহরটি","শহরে","শহরে,","শহরের","শহরের-জন্য"]·DE["Stadt"]·EN["a-city","city"]·FR["ville"]·heb["הָעִיר","וְ-","עִיר"]·HI["नगर","नगर-के-लिए","नगर-में","नगर-से","नगरी"]·ID["kota","kota,"]·IT["città"]·jav["kitha","kutha","kutha,","kutha."]·KO["도시","도시-가","도시-를","도시가","성","성에","성이나"]·PT["cidade","cidade,"]·RU["город","город,","города","городе","городу"]·ES["ciudad"]·SW["aliuona-njaa","kwenda","mji","mji,","mji.","mjini","ukisema","wao"]·TR["şehir","şehirde","şehirden","şehre","şehri","şehrin","şehrine","şehrini"]·urd["شہر","شہر-سے","شہر-میں"]
Matt 2:23, Matt 4:5, Matt 5:14, Matt 5:35, Matt 8:33, Matt 8:34, Matt 9:1, Matt 10:5, Matt 10:11, Matt 10:14, Matt 10:15, Matt 10:23 (+38 more)
Senses
BDB / Lexicon Reference
πόλις, Epic dialect also πτόλις (found sometimes in Trag. etc., see at {πτόλις}), ἡ: Epic dialect forms, accusative singular πόληα Refs 8th c.BC+; genitive πόλιος or πτόλιος, Refs 8th c.BC+ P.(scanned ?~X ?~X ?~X ¯ Refs 8th c.BC+: Ionic dialect forms, genitive πόλεως Refs 6th c.BC+; dative mostly πόλει, but πόλῑ Refs 5th c.BC+; accusative πόλῑς Refs: Doric dialect genitive singular πόλιος Refs…