legō

This is by far the most common verb for speech in the New Testament, and it is deliberately plain. Where some verbs point to the act of making sounds or the manner of speaking, this one points to the content: what was actually said. It is the word that introduces nearly every quotation in the Gospels, the standing formula before Jesus' own words ("truly I say to you"), and the verb that reports what the Scriptures or the prophets state.

Because it is so general, its exact shade comes almost entirely from context. It can report a flat statement, a command, a question, a claim, a confession, or an objection, and the same verb covers all of them. The reader learns the force of any given saying from the words it introduces, not from this verb.

Its written sense is the same act in a different medium. When the New Testament reports what Scripture, the Law, or a prophet "says," it treats the written text as still speaking, so the verb that means "to say" naturally also means "what stands written here states."

When this verb is used of a name rather than of speech, it answers the question "what is this called?" rather than "what did someone say?" It almost always appears in the form "the one called X" or "the place called Y," attaching a known name or title to a person or place so the reader can identify it.

The naming can be neutral, simply giving the familiar name ("Simon, who is called Peter"; "the place called Golgotha"). It can also carry a note of distance, marking a title as one that people use without the writer endorsing it: the "so-called" gods, or the group "called the Circumcision." The context, not the verb itself, tells the reader whether the label is being accepted or held at arm's length.