eucharisteō

BDAG glosses the verb as "to express appreciation for benefits or blessings, give thanks, express thanks, render/return thanks," and notes the special usage "to say a prayer of thanks" over food, which underlies the Synoptic and Pauline accounts of the bread and cup (Matt 26:27; Mark 14:23; Luke 22:17, 19; 1 Cor 11:24), where it stands beside εὐλογέω in parallel feeding and meal narratives. The verb is largely a Hellenistic and Koine formation, rare in classical Greek and absent from the canonical Hebrew Bible's Greek translation except in the later books; its NT prominence is overwhelmingly Pauline. The few non-theological uses, thanking a person (Luke 17:16; Rom 16:4) and the passive of thanks rendered for a gift (2 Cor 1:11), confirm that the core sense is the act of acknowledging a benefit rather than a fixed cultic term. EDNT and NIDNTT treat the εὐχαριστ- group as the principal NT vocabulary of thanksgiving alongside the older biblical idiom carried by Hebrew יָדָה, and trace the development by which the cognate noun became the name of the Lord's Supper, a sense not yet present in the verb itself.