Beyond the bare adjective and ב־ plus a noun, Hebrew has two suffixed adverb classes. They look alike on the page — both end in a feminine-looking ending — and they behave completely differently. One is productive and journalistic; the other is a closed set — inherited rather than coined, and predominantly written — that a reader has to recognise rather than derive.
־ִית: alive, and everywhere in print
This is the useful one. Take a nisba adjective — the ־ִי adjectives covered on nisba — put it in the feminine singular, and you have an adverb.
| Adjective | Adverb | English |
|---|---|---|
| אִישִׁי — personal | אישית | personally |
| רִשְׁמִי — official | רשמית | officially |
| סוֹפִי — final | סופית | finally, for good |
| יַחֲסִי — relative | יחסית | relatively |
| חֶלְקִי — partial | חלקית | partially |
| מִיָּידִי — immediate | מיידית | immediately |
| אוֹטוֹמָטִי — automatic | אוטומטית | automatically |
| בִּלְעָדִי — exclusive | בלעדית | exclusively |
The analysis is what makes it learnable: this is not a special adverb ending at all. It is the ordinary feminine of an ordinary adjective, pressed into service beside a verb. That is also why it never agrees with anything — like every Hebrew adverb, it is frozen, and the feminine shape is a fossil of how the word was built, not information about the subject.
אני אישית לא הייתי מסכים לזה, אבל זה לא הכסף שלי.
aní ishít lo hayíti maskím lazé, avál ze lo hakésef shelí
Personally I wouldn't have agreed to it, but it's not my money. (m. speaker)
ההודעה עדיין לא פורסמה רשמית, אז אל תספר לאף אחד.
hahoda'á adáyin lo pursemá rishmít, az al tesapér le'áf ekhád
It hasn't been announced officially yet, so don't tell anyone. (to a man)
סגרנו את זה סופית, אין יותר על מה לדבר.
sagárnu et ze sofít, ein yotér al ma ledabér
We've settled it for good — there's nothing more to discuss.
הדירה יחסית קטנה, אבל השכונה שווה את זה.
hadirá yakhasít ktaná, avál hashkhuná shavá et ze
The flat is relatively small, but the neighbourhood is worth it.
־וֹת: a written class, and a parsing trap
These end in what looks exactly like a feminine plural adjective — and there is no noun anywhere for them to agree with. A reader trained on agreement stalls: נפגעו קשות has a plural verb and what appears to be a plural adjective, but the adjective is not describing the people. It is describing the injuring.
| Adverb | Reads as | Typical collocation |
|---|---|---|
| קָשׁוֹת | severely, badly | נפגע קשות · ביקר קשות |
| רַבּוֹת | a great deal | תרם רבות · הושפע רבות · השתנה רבות |
| אֲרוּכּוֹת | at length | נדון ארוכות · שוחח ארוכות |
| נֶחְרָצוֹת | emphatically, firmly | התנגד נחרצות · דחה נחרצות |
Call this class predominantly written rather than literary or archaic — the stronger label does not survive contact with the evidence. ויקימילון lists קָשׁוֹת as a plain תואר־הפועל glossed באופן קשה, חזק או עוצמתי, and its citations run from Genesis 42:30 (דִּבֶּר הָאִישׁ אֲדֹנֵי הָאָרֶץ אִתָּנוּ קָשׁוֹת) through a 2019 local-news report of a diving accident to a 2020 news item quoting a reality-television contestant on being in love. That is not a literary-only distribution.
שני הולכי רגל נפגעו קשות בתאונה בכביש החוף.
shnei holkhéi régel nifge'ú kashót bit'uná bikhvísh hakhóf
Two pedestrians were seriously injured in a crash on the coastal road. (news register)
היא מאוהבת בו קשות, וכל החברות שלה כבר מתייאשות.
hi me'ohévet bo kashót, vekhól hakhaverót shelá kvar mitya'ashót
She's badly in love with him, and all her friends have given up hope. (the same adverb well outside the news pages)
העיר השתנתה רבות מאז שעזבתי.
ha'ír hishtantá rabót me'áz she'azávti
The city has changed a great deal since I left.
הנושא נדון ארוכות בוועדה ולא הגיעו להחלטה.
hanosé nadón arukót bava'adá veló higí'u lehakhlatá
The matter was discussed at length in the committee and they reached no decision. (formal)
Which of the two forms a verb takes is lexical, not grammatical, and it is worth checking rather than guessing. Counting Hebrew Wikipedia (insource:/…/ regex searches, 15 August 2026): נפגע קשות returns 372 against נפגע קשה 184 — roughly 2 : 1 for the ־וֹת form — while נפצע קשה returns 1,832 against נפצע קשות 133, about 14 : 1 the other way. Two near-synonymous verbs, opposite preferences. There is no rule to derive here; store the collocation whole.
Here is one sentence of the kind of Hebrew where you will actually meet them — three suffixed adverbs, no unusual vocabulary.
שר האוצר דחה נחרצות את הביקורת, והדגיש שהתוכנית נדונה ארוכות ואושרה סופית בשבוע שעבר.
sar ha'otsár dakhá nekhratsót et habikóret, vehidgísh shehatokhnít nidoná arukót ve'ushrá sofít bashavúa she'avár
The finance minister firmly rejected the criticism, stressing that the plan had been discussed at length and given final approval last week. (newspaper register)
The frozen leftovers
Some of the commonest adverbs in the language belong to no live pattern and cannot be derived from anything: לאט (לְ־ + the noun אַט), חינם, סתם, לשווא, כהוגן, and לחלוטין (ל־ + a noun again).
One of them, חינם, has a documented history worth knowing. The Academy of the Hebrew Language, writing on יוֹמָם and its relatives (Wayback snapshot of 21 June 2025), identifies an ancient adverb suffix, ־ָם or ־וֹם, attached to nouns: רֵיקָם "empty-handed", דּוּמָם "silently", חִנָּם — literally "for grace", hence "for no payment" — אָמְנָם, and פִּתְאוֹם, plus שִׁלְשׁוֹם and הֲלוֹם. And it states the crucial fact plainly: after the Biblical period no new adverbs were formed this way, so what came down from the Bible "remained a closed and not large group". These words are not irregular. They are the survivors of a pattern that stopped working three thousand years ago.
קיבלנו את הכרטיסים חינם, מישהו ביטל ברגע האחרון.
kibálnu et hakartisím khinám, míshehu bitél baréga ha'akharón
We got the tickets free — somebody cancelled at the last minute. (בחינם, with ב־, is at least as common in everyday Hebrew)
עמדנו בתור שעה שלמה לשווא, המשרד היה סגור.
amádnu batór sha'á shlemá lasháv, hamisrád hayá sagúr
We queued for a whole hour for nothing — the office was closed.
שכחתי מזה לחלוטין, סליחה.
shakhákhti mizé lakhalutín, slikhá
I completely forgot about it, sorry.
Common Mistakes
1. Coining a ־ִית adverb from an adjective that has no adverbial use. The suffix looks free, and it is not: the source has to be a real ־ִי adjective and the adverb has to already exist.
❌ הוא נהג איטית
Incorrect as 'he drove slowly' — איטית is simply the feminine of the adjective איטי. Slowly is לאט: הוא נהג לאט.
✅ הוא נהג לאט ובכל זאת פספסנו את היציאה.
hu nahág le'át uvekhól zot pispásnu et hayetsi'á
He drove slowly and we still missed the exit.
2. Making the ־ִית adverb agree with a masculine subject. It ends in ־ִית, so it looks feminine, so learners "fix" it. There is nothing to fix — the adverb is frozen.
❌ הוא אישי לא מסכים
Incorrect as 'he personally disagrees' — the adverb keeps its ־ִית shape whoever the subject is: הוא אישית לא מסכים.
✅ הוא אישית לא מסכים, אבל הוא לא יעצור את זה.
hu ishít lo maskím, avál hu lo ya'atsór et ze
He personally disagrees, but he isn't going to stop it.
3. Parsing a ־וֹת adverb as an adjective. This is a reading error rather than a writing one, and it is the reason these forms feel hard: your eye supplies a noun that is not there.
❌ הוועדה דנה ארוכות
the committee discussed long ones
The committee discussed the matter at length. ארוכות is an adverb here — there is no noun for it to modify, and the plural ending is part of the adverb, not agreement.
4. Using a ־וֹת adverb across a kitchen table. Not an error — a register mismatch. Both sentences below are correct Hebrew; the first belongs to a news bulletin and the second to a conversation about it.
✅ הוא הותקף קשות בישיבת ההנהלה.
hu hutkáf kashót bishivát hahanhalá
He came under heavy attack at the board meeting. (written / formal)
✅ ירדו עליו חזק בישיבה, לא נעים היה.
yardú aláv khazák bayshivá, lo na'ím hayá
They went at him hard in the meeting — it was uncomfortable. (informal, and what you would actually hear)
Key Takeaways
- ־ִית is the productive class and is transparently the feminine of a nisba adjective used adverbially: אישית, רשמית, סופית, יחסית, חלקית, מיידית, אוטומטית, בלעדית. It is frozen and never agrees.
- Its limit is the adjective, not the suffix: no ־ִי adjective, no ־ִית adverb.
- ־וֹת is a separate, predominantly written class — קשות, רבות, ארוכות, נחרצות — and it looks like a feminine plural with no noun to agree with. Do not call it literary-only: ויקימילון records קשות as a plain adverb with modern journalistic and conversational citations.
- Which form a verb takes is lexical: Hebrew Wikipedia runs about 2 : 1 for נפגע קשות over נפגע קשה, and about 14 : 1 the other way for נפצע קשה over נפצע קשות.
- לאט, חינם, סתם, לשווא, כהוגן, לחלוטין belong to no live pattern. חינם is a survivor of the Biblical ־ָם and ־וֹם suffix, which the Academy describes as a closed group that stopped producing new members after the Bible.
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
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- Journalistic HebrewB2 — Learn to parse Israeli news prose through verb-first leads, reporting verbs, agentless passives, and compressed nominal phrases.
- Manner Adverbs and Where They SitB1 — A manner adverbial's default home is the end of the clause — after the verb and after the object. Moving it earlier is not an error but a signal, and because a Hebrew manner adverb is often a bare masculine adjective, its position is what tells you which of the two it is.
- How Hebrew Makes Adverbs (It Mostly Doesn't)A2 — There is no Hebrew ־ly. No single suffix turns any adjective into an adverb, so Hebrew assembles adverbs four different ways — a bare adjective, ב plus an abstract noun, a small suffixed class, and a large stock of words that were simply always adverbs. This page sorts them and sends you to the right one.
- ב + Noun as an Adverb: בשקט, בזהירות, במהירותA2 — Hebrew's most general adverb machine: glue ב־ onto an abstract noun and you have a manner adverb. No vocabulary list can close the class, because you can build a new one from any abstract noun you know — and the definite article never, ever gets inside.