sumpherō

This is the plain, physical sense built into the word's parts: "carry" plus "together." It describes people bringing objects into one spot. It appears just once in the New Testament, when the new believers at Ephesus bring their magic scrolls together and burn them in public.

Everything else the word does grows out of this picture. When things are brought together, they can work together for someone's good, and from that idea comes the far more common meaning: to be beneficial or advantageous.

This is the word's usual meaning in the New Testament, and it almost always comes in an impersonal form: "it is beneficial," "it is better," "it is to your advantage." The focus is on outcome, whether a course of action actually does someone good.

Two shapes of the same idea sit side by side. In one, the word is a verb: "it profits," "it is better for you that." Jesus uses it this way when he says it is better to lose an eye than for the whole self to be lost, and Caiaphas uses it when he says it is better for one man to die for the people. In the other, the word becomes a thing: "the benefit," "the advantage," "the common good," as when the gifts of the Spirit are given for the good of all.

Because the concern is real benefit rather than mere gain, it stands close to ὠφελέω, "to help or benefit someone," but keeps its own impersonal angle: not "who is helped" so much as "what works out for good."