dialogismos

At its root this word names the mind at work: turning something over, weighing it, reasoning it through. In the New Testament that inner activity is almost always shown in a bad light. The reasonings are called evil, futile, or dark, and they are the hidden contents of the heart that God alone perceives and brings to light.

The range within this one meaning runs from settled opinions a person holds, to the anxious doubts that rise up unbidden, to the corrupt schemes that spill out into sin. What holds them together is that they are all the private traffic of the heart. Luke in particular uses the word for the reasonings Jesus reads in people before they say a word.

The closest Hebrew counterpart is מַחֲשָׁבָה, the word for a thought, plan, or scheme; Paul quotes it with this Greek word when he says the Lord knows that the reasonings of the wise are futile. Among Greek words it sits near λογισμός, plain calculation or argument, but adds the sense of back-and-forth deliberating and its typically negative coloring.

When the reasoning is not kept inside one person but breaks out between people, the same word names the quarrel that results. It is the disputing that arises when each presses his own view, the wrangling and complaining that can poison a community.

Paul twice sets it beside grumbling and anger: believers are to do everything without grumbling and disputing, and to pray without anger and quarreling. The word here is not calm debate but the peevish contention that fractures fellowship. It stands close to γογγυσμός, muttered complaint, and shades toward open argument.