proseuchē

This is the New Testament's broadest word for prayer. Where some Greek words name one kind of praying, such as an urgent request born of need, this word covers the entire practice of speaking to God. It is always directed to God, never a wish said into the air or a request made of another person.

The uses fan out from that single center. Some verses treat prayer as a settled habit that believers are told to keep up: giving themselves to prayer, staying constant in it, praying at set hours. Others use it for intercession, remembering people by name before God. Still others picture the prayers themselves as concrete offerings that rise to God like incense in a bowl. These are not different meanings but the same act seen from different angles.

Because the word is this wide, it often stands beside narrower prayer words in the same sentence, one verse laying petition, thanksgiving, and intercession side by side. In those places this word tends to be the general heading and the others fill in a particular shade.

In two verses in Acts the same word names not the act of praying but the location set apart for it. Paul and his companions look for it outside a city gate, down by a river, and later head back to it.

Scholars discuss what kind of place this was. It may have been a synagogue building, or an informal open-air gathering spot by the water where Jewish residents met when there was no formal synagogue. Either way the word points to a fixed place associated with prayer rather than to prayer itself, which is why English Bibles render it here with a phrase like place of prayer rather than the single word prayer.