Learners arrive at this question wanting a rule that turns a root into a causative. There isn't one, and pretending otherwise is how you end up saying *הישנתי את התינוק. What there is is a decision procedure with five steps, most of which end in look it up or use something else entirely — and knowing which step you are standing on is worth more than any rule of thumb.
First, one thing this page will not tell you
Do not reach for pi'el because you want an intensified version of a verb. The "pi'el is the intensive binyan" label is a textbook inheritance that does not survive contact with a modern dictionary: tested pair by pair, every standard example fails — חישב against חשב is compute against think, which is specialisation, and לימד against למד is a causative, not an intensive. The whole test is on is pi'el really intensive?. Pi'el's real neighbouring niche is factitive and causative, which is exactly what makes the confusion durable — and why this page exists.
The procedure
| Step | Ask | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Does Hebrew already have a verb for this? | Then you are not choosing a binyan — you are looking one up, and it may sit on a different root than the one you started from. |
| 2 | Am I verbing a noun or a foreign word? | pi'el — or hitpa'el if the new verb is intransitive. |
| 3 | Is it "turn / go X" over a colour or a physical quality? | hif'il, which is still live in exactly this corner. |
| 4 | Is it "make someone do X", where X has a verb but no partner? | Neither binyan: גרם ל־ or הכריח את, plus an infinitive. |
| 5 | Still nothing? | Look it up. Nothing predicts which binyan an existing root uses. |
Five items, run through it
| What you want to say | Step | Result |
|---|---|---|
| put the baby to sleep | 1 | הרדים — hif'il, but on ר־ד־ם. Pealim's root list for י־שׁ־ן has seven words and no hif'il at all. |
| make somebody laugh | 1 | הצחיק — hif'il on צח״ק; Milog glosses it עורר צחוק, בידח. |
| make somebody wait | 4 | No causative exists: Pealim's entire root list for ח־כ־ה is one word, the pi'el לחכות. So גרם לו לחכות, or השאיר אותו לחכות. |
| to text somebody | 2 | סימס — pi'el, built on the consonants of an import. |
| silver goes black | 3 | השחיר — hif'il, and Milog carries both the inchoative and the causative sense in one entry. |
The first row is the one to sit with. Step 1 found a verb — just not on the root the English sentence pointed at. A gap on one root is not a gap in the language, and coining a hif'il to fill it is the error this page exists to prevent.
לקח לי שעה להרדים אותה, ועכשיו היא ערה שוב.
lakákh li sha'á lehardím otá, ve'akhsháv hi erá shuv
It took me an hour to get her down, and now she's awake again.
הוא הצחיק את כל השולחן עם סיפור אחד.
hu hitskhík et kol hashulkhán im sipúr ekhád
He had the whole table laughing with one story.
גרמתי להם לחכות בחוץ חצי שעה ולא הפסקתי להתנצל.
garámti lahém lekhakót bakhúts khatsí sha'á veló hifsákti lehitnatsél
I kept them waiting outside for half an hour and couldn't stop apologising.
היא סימסה לי באמצע הישיבה שהיא מאחרת.
hi simsá li be'emtsá hayeshivá shehí me'akhéret
She texted me in the middle of the meeting to say she'd be late. (informal; pi'el, built on an import)
Step 1 in more detail: what hif'il does when it works
Where hif'il is the causative, the relation is mechanical and worth recognising: it takes a verb that already exists and adds a participant above it, pushing the old subject down into a direct object. ידע "know" gives הודיע, which Milog glosses הביא לידיעתו של אחר דבר מה — "brought something to another person's knowledge". That gloss is the argument-structure change written out as a definition.
כולם ידעו חוץ ממני, ואף אחד לא חשב להודיע לי.
kulám yad'ú khuts miméni, ve'áf ekhád lo khasháv lehodía li
Everyone knew except me, and it didn't occur to anybody to tell me.
הודיעו לנו רק בבוקר שהטיסה בוטלה.
hodí'u lánu rak babóker shehatisá butlá
They only told us in the morning that the flight had been cancelled.
The same relation holds for לבש and הלביש, אכל and האכיל, נכנס and הכניס, ראה and הראה. The pairs and the syntax are set out on the causative sense of hif'il. What you cannot do is run the relation in reverse to build a new member of it — which is what step 1 is protecting you from.
Step 3: hif'il is narrowed, not closed
It is widely repeated that new Hebrew verbs go to pi'el and hitpa'el, full stop. That is too strong, and the specialists do not say it. Bat-El (2013, Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, Brill, 704–707) finds pi'el the commonest binyan for denominal verbs but by no means the only one, and notes that hif'il is selected for morpho-syntactic or phonological reasons. Bolozky documents the two live niches: inchoatives over colours and physical states — השחיר, הבריא, הרזה — and loan verbs whose consonant cluster survives better in that frame, השפריץ, הסניף. His 2007 summary is the one to hold onto: hif'il remains the preferred causative in literary Hebrew while pi'el has taken over agentive verbs colloquially. The retreat is register-conditioned, not closure.
Milog's entry for השחיר shows the niche from inside: sense 1 נעשה שחור או כהה מאוד (became black), sense 2 גרם לדבר להיות כהה או שחור (made something black). One hif'il verb, both directions.
הכסף משחיר אם לא מנקים אותו מדי פעם.
hakésef mashkhír im lo menakím otó midéi pá'am
Silver goes black if you don't clean it now and then. (hif'il, and nothing is causing anything)
השמש השחירה לו את הגב תוך יומיים.
hashémesh hishkhíra lo et hagáv tokh yomáyim
The sun burnt his back black in two days. (the same verb with a causer added — Milog carries both senses in one entry)
For completeness: pa'al is essentially closed (Bolozky 1978 knew of two recent denominatives, gamáz and kharáp), nif'al is essentially closed with it, and pu'al and huf'al are not choices at all — they are the automatic passives of pi'el and hif'il. The full picture is on what each binyan means; the loan-verb machinery is on pi'el, the factory for new verbs.
The residue, stated honestly
Two facts spoil any clean version of this page. Some pi'el verbs are causatives: Milog files גִּידֵּל as pi'el and glosses it make grow, cultivate and act as a parent to — a causative of גדל in everything but binyan, and לימד is another. And a large share of hif'il is not causative at all: הרגיש, הבין, החליט, התחיל, הגיע and הצליח are all hif'il, all extremely common, and none of them makes anybody do anything — הגיע does not even take an object. That population is inventoried on hif'il verbs that aren't causative.
הם מגדלים עגבניות על הגג ומחלקים לכל הבניין.
hem megadlím agvaniyót al hagág umekhalkím lekhól habinyán
They grow tomatoes on the roof and hand them round to the whole building. (pi'el, and unmistakably causative)
התחלתי לרוץ בגלל הגב ובסוף זה מה שהציל אותי.
hitkhálti larúts biglál hagáv uvasóf ze ma shehitsíl otí
I started running because of my back, and in the end that's what saved me. (התחיל and הציל are both hif'il; only one of them causes anything)
Common Mistakes
1. Coining a hif'il on a root that has none. This is step 1 skipped, and it is the single most productive error in this area, because the hif'il frame is so easy to build.
❌ הישנתי את התינוק בשמונה
Incorrect — there is no hif'il on י־שׁ־ן. Pealim's root list gives seven words, of which the only verbs are the pa'al לישון and the hitpa'el להתיישן. 'Put to sleep' is הרדים, a hif'il on a different root: הרדמתי את התינוק.
✅ הרדמתי אותו בעגלה בדרך הביתה.
hirdámti otó ba'agalá badérekh habáyta
I got him off to sleep in the pram on the way home.
2. Coining a pi'el on spec instead. The mirror error, and it lands on a real word — which is why it goes unnoticed.
❌ ציחקתי אותה כל הערב
Incorrect as 'I made her laugh all evening' — Pealim does list צִחֵק, but as a pi'el meaning 'joke, make fun', and marks it biblical. The modern verb is the hif'il: הצחקתי אותה כל הערב.
✅ הצחקתי אותה כל הערב ובסוף היא ביקשה שאפסיק.
hitskhákti otá kol ha'érev uvasóf hi bikshá she'afsík
I had her laughing all evening and in the end she asked me to stop.
3. Building a causative for a verb that has no partner in any binyan. Step 4 exists for exactly this, and learners skip it because גרם ל־ feels like a workaround rather than the answer.
❌ החכיתי אותם בחוץ שעה
Incorrect — ח־כ־ה has exactly one verb in Pealim's dictionary, the pi'el לחכות, and no causative in any binyan. Hebrew uses a periphrastic causative here: גרמתי להם לחכות, or השארתי אותם לחכות.
✅ השארתי אותם לחכות בחוץ ולא סיפרתי למה.
hish'árti otám lekhakót bakhúts veló sipárti láma
I left them waiting outside and didn't say why.
4. Using גרם ל־ where a binyan partner exists. Both of the following are correct Hebrew, which is why this one is not a cross — but they do not mean the same thing, and reaching for גרם by default flattens a distinction Hebrew keeps.
✅ האכלתי את הילדים מוקדם והם נרדמו לפני שבע.
he'ekhálti et hayeladím mukdám vehém nirdemú lifnéi shéva
I fed the kids early and they were asleep before seven. (the binyan partner: I did the feeding myself)
✅ גרמתי להם לאכול ירקות בלי שהם שמו לב.
garámti lahém le'ekhól yerakót bli shehém sámu lev
I got them to eat vegetables without noticing. (the periphrastic causative: I brought it about, they did the eating)
Key Takeaways
- The question has two halves. If Hebrew already has a verb, the binyan is a lexical fact — look it up, and expect the answer to sit on a different root sometimes (הרדים for "put to sleep", where י־שׁ־ן has no hif'il at all).
- If the verb does not exist yet: verbing a noun or an import takes pi'el (hitpa'el if intransitive); colours and physical qualities still take hif'il; and "make someone do X" with no partner available takes גרם ל־ or הכריח את plus an infinitive.
- Never coin a hif'il from a pa'al root on spec. *הישנתי and *החכיתי are what that produces, and both roots simply have no causative.
- Hif'il is narrowed, not closed — inchoatives השחיר, הבריא, הרזה and cluster-preserving loans השפריץ, הסניף — and its retreat is register-conditioned: literary Hebrew still prefers it, colloquial Hebrew has moved to pi'el (Bat-El 2013; Bolozky 2007). pa'al is essentially closed, nif'al closed outright, and pu'al and huf'al are not choices.
- The residue cuts both ways: גידל and לימד are pi'el causatives, and הרגיש, הבין, החליט, התחיל are hif'il verbs that cause nothing.
- Pi'el is not the intensive binyan. If that is why you were reaching for it, the premise is the problem.
- The one storable generalisation is about argument structure: hif'il adds a participant to an existing verb; pi'el often simply is the verb. Read it backwards to interpret, never forwards to build.
Now practice Hebrew
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- פיעל vs הפעיל for CausativesB2 — Both binyanim build causatives, and nothing decides which one a given root uses. 'Make happy' is the pi'el שימח and there is no *השמיח; 'make sad' is the hif'il העציב. The only defensible generalisation is a tendency — and the causative you can always build is neither of them.
- Making Someone Do Something: The Causative SenseB1 — Hif'il really does build causatives: אכל → האכיל, לבש → הלביש, נכנס → הכניס, ירד → הוריד. The relation is systematic where it exists — one extra participant, the old subject demoted to a direct object — but you cannot manufacture new members of it, and Modern Hebrew's general-purpose causative is periphrastic: גרם ל־ plus an infinitive.
- Is Pi'el Really 'Intensive'? שבר vs שיברC1 — Every textbook says pi'el intensifies its pa'al partner. Test the standard pairs against what the dictionaries actually print and not one of them survives — the intensive reading is a fact about Biblical Hebrew that did not carry into the modern language.
- What Each Binyan Means — and When It Means NothingB1 — The textbook semantics — pa'al basic, pi'el intensive, hif'il causative, nif'al passive, hitpa'el reflexive — work beautifully on the examples textbooks choose and fail on the verbs you actually use. Here is where the system holds, where it collapses, and which binyanim are still coining new verbs today.
- Pi'el: The Factory for New Israeli VerbsB1 — pi'el is the default mould for a new Hebrew verb — but the popular line that new verbs go only to pi'el and hitpa'el is wrong, and the sources say something more precise and more interesting about where hif'il still wins.