The Word Spoken Only Once

2 Corinthians 6:8 · Rare or unique word · 2026-08-04

διὰ δόξης καὶ ἀτιμίας διὰ δυσφημίας καὶ εὐφημίας ὡς πλάνοι καὶ ἀληθεῖς

By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true;

The English reader glides past 'good report' as if it were the plain opposite of 'evil report' — a common word, easily matched, easily forgotten.

The Greek behind 'good report' is euphemia (eu-PHAY-mee-ah) — literally 'well-speaking,' the root that gives English 'euphemism.' It appears here and only here in the entire New Testament. Its partner, dusphemia ('ill-speaking,' also rare), is likewise a hapax. Paul reaches for a word he needs nowhere else — one built from eu (good) plus phemi (to speak) — to name something ordinary praise-language couldn't quite carry.

Paul is cataloguing the paradoxes of apostolic life: glory and dishonor, ill report and good report, taken as impostors yet true. He needs pairs that are exact opposites, not approximate ones. Common Greek had words for slander and for praise, but euphemia carries a specific weight — the sound of being well-spoken-of, spoken well to your face and about you. Paul reaches past the ordinary vocabulary for a word precise enough to sit exactly opposite dusphemia. The rarity is not decoration; it is the cost of exactness. He will not let 'good report' be vague when 'evil report' is so sharply drawn.

This is a small window into how God's servants are called to endure both extremes without being shaped by either. Paul does not linger longer in euphemia than in dusphemia — both are listed in the same breath, both are diadous ('through') the same ministry. The applause and the accusation are equally beside the point; what matters is what is true underneath them ('and yet true'). This is the shape of a life anchored outside the opinions that surround it — anchored, in fact, in the God who sees what report cannot. That such steadiness is even conceivable, let alone commanded, points to a security not manufactured by human words but given. Only a soul held by Someone unmoved by fashionable opinion could bear both eu and dus with the same open hand.

Today

Name one recent moment you leaned on someone's good opinion of you — and consciously hand that need over to God in prayer, asking to stand as steady under praise as under criticism.