How do you find all the Hapax legomenon in a greek text, i.e. all the hapax in Colossians in USB 5 text?
Can someone tell me the best way to find all the Hapax legomenon in a greek text, for example all the hapax in Colossians in the USB 5 text?
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[COUNT 1] [RANGE col]
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[COUNT 1] <AND> [RANGE col]
this finds the number of words with a single occurrence in Colossians - this is 37 - though a number are proper nouns and so you can use the following to remove them
[COUNT 1] <AND> [RANGE col] <NOT> *@ [NOUN proper]
This returns 29 results
You can change the title of the book in range to change the book - for example, “col” to “rom”
However, if your question is not about which work, but merely about frequencies, you could search the whole of UBS5 using [COUNT 1] <NOT> *@ [NOUN proper]
then if you create a table fo counts in analytics - using the menu below
You can then create the following table of the counts and frequency of occurrences of occurences og single use words in the UBS 5 - see below
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Just a suggestion, but AI does pretty good answering these kinds of questions.
I asked Claude: “Tell me the best way to find all the Hapax legomenon in a greek text, for example all the hapax in Colossians in the USB 5 text using Accordance Bible Software.”
Claude responded: Good question. Accordance is actually well-suited for this — here's the cleanest workflow for finding hapax legomena (words occurring only once) in Colossians using the GNT (UBS5/NA28 text, which Accordance treats as the same critical text under the "GNT" module).
Method 1: Using the built-in Statistics/Analysis tool (easiest)Open the GNT module (Search window, choose GNT5 / GNT-T as your text).
Set the search scope to Colossians — type Colossians in the Range box, or restrict your search range to just that book before running anything.
Go to Tools > Analysis > Vocabulary (sometimes listed as "Word List" or accessible via right-click on the text > Analyze Vocabulary, depending on your version).
This generates a complete word-frequency list for whatever range is active (Colossians). It will show every lemma/form with its count.
Sort by frequency (ascending) — words with a count of "1" are your hapax legomena within Colossians.Method 2: Construct a search to isolate hapax directly
If you want Accordance to search out the hapax rather than just generate a frequency table:Open a Search window on the GNT.
Use the AnalyzeSearch / Search All Text feature with a frequency search:Construct: [FREQUENCY < n] style searches aren't native by word, but Accordance's "Find All forms occurring exactly once" is best done through the Vocabulary/Statistics module rather than the search line, since "frequency = 1" isn't a searchable text criterion directly — it's a derived statistic.
Alternative: In the Vocabulary analysis window, after generating the list, use Edit > Find within that results window to filter/display only entries where Count = 1.Method 3: Distinguish "hapax in Colossians" vs. "true NT hapax"
This is the key distinction worth being precise about, since "hapax legomenon" gets used two ways:Hapax within Colossians — a word used once in that book (but possibly common elsewhere in the NT). This is what the Vocabulary tool on a restricted range gives you.
Absolute NT hapax — a word occurring only once in the entire Greek NT. For this, run the same Vocabulary analysis but with the range set to the whole GNT, then cross-reference which of Colossians' words have a total NT count of 1.A practical way to get the second list:
Generate the Colossians word list (Method 1).
Generate a second Vocabulary analysis for the whole GNT.
Compare — any word from Colossians whose GNT-wide total is "1" is a true NT hapax (these are the ones usually flagged in commentaries, e.g., Colossians is famous for several, like ἀνταναπληρόω in 1:24 or εἰρηνοποιήσας in 1:20).0 -
Thanks, Tim!
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