Bible word study

Lashown (Strong’s H3956): Meaning in the Bible

Lashown (לָשׁוֹן) is the Hebrew word numbered H3956 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as the tongue (of man or animals), used literally (as the instrument of licking, eating, or speech), and figuratively (speech, an ingot, a fork of flame, a cove of water). In the King James Bible it is translated babbler, bay, evil speaker, language, talker.

• Original wordלָשׁוֹן
• Transliterationlâshôwn
• Pronunciationlaw-shone'
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH3956
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. or לָשֹׁן; also (in plural) feminine לְשֹׁנָה; from H3960;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Lashown appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Lashown (H3956) stands behind 116 English renderings in 114 verses across 22 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Psalms (34), Proverbs (19), Isaiah (15).

How the King James Bible renders Lashown, by count

• tongue89 of 116 (77 percent)
• language9 of 116 (8 percent)
• tongues9 of 116 (8 percent)
• bay3 of 116 (3 percent)
• wedge2 of 116 (2 percent)
• babbler1 of 116 (1 percent)

Three places to read Lashown

• Genesis 10:5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.
• Psalms 39:3 My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue,
• Proverbs 25:23 The north wind driveth away rain: so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue.

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Lashown in the original Hebrew lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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