ὁ, ἡ, τό means "the". It is the commonest word in Greek, and it is your best friend: it usually agrees with its noun, so the article tells you the noun's gender, number and case even before you know the noun.
Greek nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Gender is grammatical: λόγος "word" is masculine, ψυχή "soul" feminine, δῶρον "gift" neuter. Learn each noun with its article: ὁ λόγος, ἡ ψυχή, τὸ δῶρον.
There are four cases to learn now. Besides the nominative (subject) and accusative (object): the genitive is roughly English of ("the word of the god"), and the dative roughly to or for ("he gave it to the man").
The article
The article has no vocative; ὦ is often used before a name when addressing someone.
| masc. sg | fem. sg | neut. sg | masc. pl | fem. pl | neut. pl | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nominative | ὁ140k | ἡ93k | τό110k | οἱ79k | αἱ24k | τά47k |
| genitive | τοῦ103k | τῆς167k | τοῦ95k | τῶν120k | τῶν31k | τῶν101k |
| dative | τῷ57k | τῇ66k | τῷ53k | τοῖς64k | ταῖς26k | τοῖς36k |
| accusative | τόν145k | τήν216k | τό161k | τούς93k | τάς63k | τά98k |
Unrolling the passage…
τὸ σῶμα "the body": τό shows the noun is neuter, and here it is nominative. τοῦτό ἐστιν is "this is"; μου "of me, my".
Greek shown exactly as the source file gives it. Click any word to look it up.
- ὁ …
- σῶμα …
- οὗτος …