akoē

This is the receiving side of the word. It covers the whole business of taking in sound: the faculty of hearing that a body has, the ears through which sound enters, and the act of listening itself. Which shade is in view depends on the sentence, and English usually needs a different word for each (the sense of hearing, the ears, or hearing as an action), but they are one idea seen from different angles.

Because the word points to reception rather than to any particular content, it is naturally paired with sight. When Paul asks where the sense of hearing would be if the whole body were an eye, and when Peter speaks of Lot tormented by what he saw and heard, the word simply names one of the channels by which a person perceives the world.

From the faculty it slides easily to the organ. To have something reach your ears, to have itching ears, or to turn your ears away from the truth all use this same word for the physical ear standing in for the person who does or does not want to listen.

This is the other side of the same coin: not the act of hearing but the thing heard. What travels to the ear is news, and so the word comes to mean a report, a piece of information, fame that spreads, or a rumor. When Jesus' fame runs through Syria, when Herod hears the report about him, or when people hear of wars and rumors of wars, this is the word at work.

The New Testament then puts this everyday sense to weighty use. The message a preacher delivers is, from the hearer's point of view, exactly a report that reaches the ear, so the same word names the gospel as something proclaimed and received. This is the sense behind the quotation of Isaiah, who has believed what we have heard, and behind Paul's statement that faith comes from what is heard.

Several of these passages keep a deliberate double edge, since the message and the hearing of it are hard to pry apart. That overlap is not vagueness; it is the point, and it is where the word repays careful reading.