Quick Definition
βολίζω v. I cast the line for sounding, I sound
Strong's Definition
from 1002; to heave the lead
KJV Usage: sound
UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament
UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament © United Bible Societies, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Thayer's Greek Lexicon
βολίζω: 1 aor. ἐβόλισα;; (Boris a missile, dart; a line and plummet with which mariners sound the depth of the sea, a sounding-lead) ; to heave the lead, take soundings: Acts xxvii. 28. (Besides only in Eustath.; [Mid. intrans. to sink in water, Geopon. 6, 177.)
Mounce Concise Greek Dictionary
βολίζω bolizō 2x
to take soundings, sound Acts 27:28*
Abbott-Smith Greek Lexicon
* βολίζω
(< βολίς, in sense of sounding-lead),
to heave the lead, take soundings: Ac 27:28.†
Moulton & Milligan — Vocabulary of the Greek NT
βολίζω. The adj. βόλιμος is found gzater in Sy// 140 (B.C. 353-2), meaning “leaden”: see Dittenberger on 1.28and Boisacq s.7. μόλυβδος. Thackeray (Gr. i. p. 106) notes μόλιμος and βόλιβον from MSS of LXX, which may illustrate the survival of some of the widely divergent forms current in earlier Greek dialects. The name of ‘‘lead ” is supposed to have been borrowed very early (before Homer), perhaps from Iberians in Spain: cf. reff. in Walde Zaft. Etym.2 s.v. plumbum. Tt is at least possible that βολίς in the sense plummet (acc. to Homeric scholia) may be really “the lead,” with form affected by Body etc. from βάλλω. However this may be, the verb βολίζω ‘sound ” is very instructive as a Gt. eip. in Ac 2728: eleven centuries later, the Homeric scholar Eustathius uses it as familiar from ancient Greek, and he does not mention Luke or hint that he remembered what for us happens to be the solitary example of the word : see the quotations from Eustathius in Wetstein ad Joc. It is sufficiently obvious that Luke did not coin the word, and its history may help less obvious cases elsewhere.
Liddell-Scott-Jones — Greek-English Lexicon
βολίζω (bolizō) — to sound. βολίζω, (βολίς) heave the lead, take soundings, [NT]:—passive, sink in water, [Refs]
