the Sabbath: the seventh day of the week, set apart from work for rest and worship
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the word's home meaning and its overwhelming use in the New Testament. It names the weekly day of rest that God commanded Israel to keep, beginning at sunset on Friday and ending at sunset on Saturday. In the Gospels the word usually appears in conflict stories, where what may or may not be done on this day is argued back and forth.
The word slips between singular and plural without changing its sense: writers say "on the Sabbath" using either a singular or a plural form, and even spell out "the day of the Sabbath" with a plural. So a plural form does not by itself mean more than one day. Where the New Testament does point to several separate Sabbaths, the context makes that plain, as when Paul reasons in a synagogue across three of them.
Beyond the single weekly day, the word can also gather up the whole institution of Sabbath-keeping as one of the appointed observances of the law, listed alongside festivals and new-moon days.
Nuances
1athe weekly day of rest and worship, the seventh day
1bSabbath-keeping as one of the appointed observances of the law
Col 2:16*
2
week: a seven-day span counted from one Sabbath to the next
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
Because the Sabbath anchored the Jewish week, the same word came to stand for the seven-day stretch the Sabbath governs. This is a separate meaning, not a shade of the first: an English reader needs the word week here, not Sabbath, and the day in view is usually not the Sabbath at all.
The meaning lives almost entirely inside a fixed phrase. "The first of the week," using the number one with this word, is how all four Gospels and Acts name the day Jesus rose and the day the early believers gathered. The same usage lets a Pharisee boast that he fasts twice a week. Reading Sabbath into these places would invert the sense: the resurrection day is the first day after the Sabbath, not the Sabbath itself.
Nuances
2athe first day of the week (the day after the Sabbath)
Mat 28:1 (2×)*Mrk 16:2Mrk 16:9*Luk 24:1Jhn 20:1Jhn 20:19Act 20:71Co 16:2
the same Greek word also means week, a sense the English word Sabbath never carriesMrk 16:2Luk 18:12
a plural form can still mean the single weekly day, so plurality does not by itself imply more than one SabbathAct 13:14Act 16:13
Both
both name the weekly day God set apart from work for rest and worshipMrk 2:27Luk 6:9
Only Sabbath
in English Sabbath can loosely mean any day of religious rest, including Sunday for some Christians; the Greek word in its day sense points to the seventh-day rest of the Jewish week
the Greek word is literally the Sabbath word, so it ties the seven-day span to the day that closes it, a link the bare English week losesMrk 16:2Act 20:7
Both
both count a span of seven daysLuk 18:121Co 16:2
Only week
English week is a neutral calendar unit with no religious anchor; it carries none of the Sabbath association built into the Greek word
How sabbaton differs from similar Greek words
σαββατισμόςa Sabbath-rest as a state or experience of resting, the keeping rather than the day itself; used once for the rest that still remains for God's people.
Comes weekly, and the Gospels use it constantly as the day a scene happens on: Jesus teaches in the synagogue, and a healing on that day starts an argument.Mrk 1:21Luk 4:16Jhn 5:16
Carries a body of rules people fight over, so the arguments are about what may lawfully be done on it: picking grain, healing, lifting an animal out of a pit.Mat 12:2Mrk 3:4Luk 14:5
Stretches beyond the day itself to name the whole seven-day week, which is how the New Testament dates the resurrection as the first day counted from it, and how a fast or a collection is set on a weekly rhythm.Mat 28:1Luk 18:121Co 16:2
Becomes something Jesus claims authority over and interprets, saying it was made for people and that he is its lord.Mrk 2:27Mrk 2:28Luk 6:5
Both
Both are set times on Israel's calendar, and Colossians names them in one breath, alongside a yearly feast and rules about food and drink, as observances no one should be judged over.Col 2:16
Both are days whose keeping was a live dispute in the early churches, whether over which times a believer must mark or over what may be done on the weekly day.Col 2:16Jhn 9:16
Names a monthly marker set by the moon's renewal, so the observance moves with the sky and falls once a lunar month rather than on a fixed repeating day.Col 2:16
Surfaces only once in the New Testament, and only inside a list of Jewish set times, never as the day on which anything is said or done.Col 2:16
sabbaton in the other biblical languages
שַׁבָּתHebrew“Sabbath”the Hebrew word this one carries over, the weekly seventh-day rest of the law; the Greek adds the further sense of week, which the Hebrew word does not have.
In the Gospels the word almost always names the day in a running argument about what people are allowed to do on it, and Jesus claims authority over it. The disputes are about healing, picking grain, and carrying a mat, and he answers that he is master of the day.Mrk 2:27Mrk 2:28Mat 12:8Luk 13:14Jhn 5:16
The same Greek word, often in its plural form, also became the everyday name for the whole week, so that "the first of the Sabbaths" simply meant the first day of the week. This is the wording used for the morning Jesus rose from the dead.Mat 28:1Mrk 16:2Luk 24:1Jhn 20:1Act 20:7
In Acts the word marks the regular meeting day when people gathered in the synagogue to hear the Scriptures read and preached, so it points to a weekly assembly rather than to the rules of resting.Act 13:14Act 13:27Act 15:21Act 17:2Act 18:4
Both
Both words name the same institution: the seventh-day rest set apart as holy by God's own command, and the Greek word in the New Testament is simply the carry-over of the Hebrew day into Greek.Exo 20:8Luk 4:16
In both Testaments the day is reserved for gathering and worship rather than ordinary labor, kept as a sacred assembly day for God's people.Lev 23:3Luk 4:31
The Hebrew word is where the seventh-day rest is first given as a binding command and tied to creation, with detailed rules about who must rest and what work is forbidden. This is the foundation the later Greek word assumes.Exo 20:8Exo 20:10Exo 20:11Deu 5:12Lev 23:3
In the Hebrew Scriptures the day is named as the special sign between God and Israel, the marker of the covenant that sets them apart from other nations.Exo 31:13Exo 31:16Ezk 20:12Ezk 20:20
The same Hebrew word stretches beyond the weekly day to a whole year of rest for the farmland, so that the land itself keeps a sabbath when it lies unplanted and is even said to make up its missed rests during exile.Lev 25:4Lev 25:6Lev 26:34Lev 26:352Ch 36:21
Breaking this day in the Hebrew Scriptures carries a death sentence, and the warning is enforced in a real case, giving the word a weight of capital law that the Greek term never carries.Exo 31:14Exo 31:15Exo 35:2Num 15:32
It names the day itself as a fixed point on the calendar, the day people gather to hear teaching and by which events are dated.Mrk 1:21Luk 4:16Act 13:14
Because it names a dated day, it can be counted as a series of recurring occasions, and it stretches further to mean the seven day span from one Sabbath to the next, so it becomes the ordinary word rendered "week".Act 17:2Mrk 16:2Luk 18:121Co 16:2
It is the word arguments form around: since it names the occasion rather than the degree of stopping, people can ask what may lawfully be done on it and accuse one another of breaking it.Mrk 3:4Luk 13:14Jhn 5:16Jhn 9:16
Both
Both words name time in which ordinary work is laid down by command rather than by choice, time that belongs to God and not to the worker.Lev 23:3Luk 23:56Mrk 2:27
For both, the holiness of the time is enforced, so working through it counts as a grave offense and not a private lapse.Exo 35:2Jhn 5:18Mat 12:2
It states how complete the stopping is rather than which day it falls on, and it does that by being paired with the word for Sabbath in the phrase rendered "a sabbath of complete rest", reserved for the holiest times when no work at all is allowed.Exo 31:15Lev 16:31Lev 23:3Lev 23:32
It can cover a whole year rather than a day, so it describes farmland lying unworked for twelve months, a rest nobody attends and no one experiences as refreshment.Lev 25:4Lev 25:5
It marks festival days as rest days even when they are not the seventh day of the week, such as the first day of the seventh month and the closing day of the autumn feast.Lev 23:24Lev 23:39
What scholars say about sabbaton
Standard lexica treat the word under two heads: the weekly seventh-day rest (the dominant New Testament use, in singular and plural forms alike, and by extension the institution of Sabbath observance), and, in the fixed phrase counting from one Sabbath, the seven-day week. The word is a loan from Aramaic into Greek, ultimately from the Hebrew Sabbath term, and its day sense matches the Hebrew word it renders while the week sense is a Greek development.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. σάββατονlexicon
LSJ, s.v. σάββατονlexicon
E. Lohse, "σάββατον, σαββατισμός, παρασκευή," TDNT 7:1-35dictionary