to become more than there was: to increase, grow, or mount up in amount, and so to end up with more than was needed
This verb is built on the Greek word for "more", so it always looks back at a smaller earlier amount and reports that there is now more than that. That backward glance is what sets it apart from its closest neighbor, the verb for overflowing (περισσεύω), which pictures a quantity spilling past the measure it was set against, and from the verb for multiplying (πληθύνω), which counts heads and says a group has become more numerous.
What grows here is nearly always an amount or a quality rather than a population, and the verb passes no verdict of its own on the growth. The same word reports:
- wrongdoing gaining ground once the law arrived
- God's kindness answering it with far more of itself
- a congregation's love for one another swelling year by year
- settled Christian qualities already present and still growing
- a credit mounting up in the account of a generous church
Twice the word steps outside plain growth. Once it weighs an amount against what was needed and finds a leftover, which is how Paul quotes the story of the manna: the person who gathered a lot ended up with nothing over. And once God himself is the one doing the increasing, when Paul prays that the Lord would make a church's love grow and overflow toward everyone.