Empty talk
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Kenophonia means empty talk, hollow speech, profane chatter, or discussion without faithful substance. Paul tells Timothy to turn away from it while guarding the entrusted deposit and to avoid it because its trajectory is further ungodliness and its spread resembles destructive disease.
Reader summary
Full entry for κενοφωνία (G2757) · Open the biblical lexicon
Kenophonia means empty talk, hollow speech, profane chatter, or discussion without faithful substance. Paul tells Timothy to turn away from it while guarding the entrusted deposit and to avoid it because its trajectory is further ungodliness and its spread resembles destructive disease.
The BSB source-word alignment has 2 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include empty chatter (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at 1 Timothy 6:20. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Timothy (1), 2 Timothy (1).
Kenophonia means empty talk, hollow speech, profane chatter, or discussion without faithful substance. Paul tells Timothy to turn away from it while guarding the entrusted deposit and to avoid it because its trajectory is further ungodliness and its spread resembles destructive disease. The noun does not condemn ordinary conversation, questions, creative language, or every disagreement.
Its emptiness is theological and moral: speech claims significance yet lacks truth, reverence, constructive purpose, or obedient fruit. Churches should examine what talk says, what authority supports it, whom it affects, and where it leads. Leaders must not label credible reports or inconvenient scrutiny empty chatter; they should confront demonstrably hollow speech while offering sound teaching, truthful process, and useful work in its place.
Kenophonia names hollow, irreverent speech that competes with the entrusted gospel, advances ungodliness, and spreads harm. Timothy's response is guarded truth and deliberate distance, not contempt for all conversation.
O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent, empty chatter and the opposing arguments of so-called “knowledge,”
First Timothy 6:20 tells Timothy to guard the deposit, turning away from profane empty chatter and contradictions of falsely named knowledge. Hollow speech competes with entrusted truth.
But avoid irreverent, empty chatter, which will only lead to more ungodliness,
Second Timothy 2:16 commands avoidance of irreverent empty talk because those participating advance further into ungodliness. Direction and fruit reveal its danger.
And the talk of such men will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus,
Second Timothy 2:17 supplies immediate supporting context rather than another occurrence: their word spreads like gangrene, illustrated by teachers who say the resurrection has already occurred.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. empty talk
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
2 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
empty disputing, worthless babble
Read verseempty disputing, worthless babble
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 1 case and number pattern. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
κενοφωνία is built from these roots:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Kenophonia is dangerous not simply because it uses many words, but because verbal activity substitutes for faithful substance. In 1 Timothy, it stands beside claims mislabeled knowledge and against the guarded deposit. In 2 Timothy, its path moves deeper into ungodliness and its damage spreads through teaching that overturns resurrection hope. Churches should resist content ecosystems that reward novelty, outrage, obscurity, or endless reaction without accountable claims and edifying ends.
Yet the label itself can become hollow when leaders apply it to questions they do not wish to answer. A faithful response names the error, shows the evidence, protects affected hearers, limits destructive amplification, and fills the space with Scripture-governed teaching and concrete obedience.
1Tim.6.20
Kenophonia combines kenos, empty, with phone, voice or sound. It denotes empty-sounding or hollow talk, especially speech lacking the truth and reverent substance it claims.
Prophets condemn empty visions and words not sent by God, while wisdom contrasts abundant foolish speech with truthful words fitly spoken.
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