Hypokrites originally meant a stage actor in classical Greek — one who speaks from behind a mask — but by the time of the New Testament it had become a stinging epithet for religious pretenders. All 18 occurrences carry this pejorative sense, and the vast majority come from the lips of Jesus himself in Matthew's Gospel, where it becomes his signature rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns against practicing righteousness 'like the hypocrites' who pray on street corners and disfigure their faces when fasting to be seen by others (Matt 6:2, 5, 16). The devastating sevenfold 'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!' of Matthew 23 (vv. 13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29) constitutes the most concentrated denunciation in the Gospels. Luke preserves Jesus calling the crowds hypocrites for reading weather signs but not the signs of the times (Luke 12:56; 13:15). The underlying theatrical metaphor — a person performing a role rather than living authentically — gives the word its enduring moral force. Spanish 'hipocrita,' French 'hypocrite,' and German 'Heuchler' all descend from or translate this Greek term.