diapherō

This is the plain, physical sense: to pick something up and carry it from one place through or across another. The base verb φέρω simply means to carry or bear, and adding the idea of "through" gives this word its picture of movement across a space.

The same verb turns to the passive easily, and then it describes being carried along rather than doing the carrying. When the thing carried is a ship, it means being driven helplessly across open water. When the thing carried is a message, it means news being carried through a whole region until it has spread everywhere. In each case something is moved through a space, whether on its own errand, by a storm, or by word of mouth.

From the idea of carrying things apart in different directions comes the sense of things standing apart, being unlike each other. One star outshines another; an heir who is still a child looks no different in practice from a household servant.

Greek also used the word in a fixed turn of phrase meaning "it makes no difference" or "it does not matter to me." Paul speaks that way when he says the past standing of the Jerusalem leaders makes no difference to him. The thread holding these together is simple contrast: two things measured against each other and found unlike, or found to matter equally little.

When two things differ and one comes out ahead, the word shifts from "differ" to "be worth more." This is its most frequent use in the New Testament, and almost always to reassure: if God feeds the birds, how much more will he care for you, who are worth far more than they are.

The same comparison reaches past worth to importance. In two of Paul's letters the phrase behind "the things that are excellent" can mean either the things that genuinely matter most or, on an older reading, simply the things that differ and so must be told apart. Both readings rest on the one idea at the word's core: some things rise above others.