למרות ש־, אף על פי ש־, אם כי

Which structures each concessive is allowed to govern — noun phrase or clause — is worked out on concessive clauses, and that page is where to go for the syntax. This one is about the words themselves: where they came from, which of them a dictionary labels and which it does not, and why one very ordinary-looking phrase in the family gets corrected while its identical-looking twin does not.

The everyday one, and who actually objects to it

למרות ש־ is what an Israeli says. Nothing on this page should leave you doubting that.

You will nevertheless be told at some point that למרות ש is not standard, and it is worth knowing whose objection that is. It is not the Academy's. The Academy's dictionary files לַמְרוֹת as a preposition of the root מרי and glosses it, with no caveat and no register label at all, as אף על פי (raw Wayback capture 5 July 2023) — defining a noun-taking preposition by handing you a clause-taking conjunction. The objection is recorded on he.wiktionary, which notes that הצירוף "למרות ש" נחשב לא תקני on the ground that biblical Hebrew puts a noun after למרות and not a clause, and recommends אף ש־ or אף על פי ש־ instead. That is the language correctors' position, faithfully reported.

Against it stands the Academy writing about something else. Explaining why the old concessive עם היות has all but vanished, its article on the היות family attributes the loss to התפתחותם של צירופי ויתור אחרים, בייחוד למרות ש־ — the development of other concessives, especially למרות ש־ — beside the older אף על פי ש־ and אף ש־. It is treating למרות ש־ as simply the modern Hebrew concessive.

Two different words, both spelled אף

Here is the piece of history that repays learning, because it resolves a usage question rather than decorating one. The Academy sets it out in על אף ואף על פי (published 19 February 2025).

In אף על פי, the אף is the particle meaning also, even. It is the same אף as the biblical concessive אף כי: אַף כִּי עָשׂוּ לָהֶם עֵגֶל מַסֵּכָה… לֹא עֲזַבְתָּם בַּמִּדְבָּר (Nehemiah 9:18–19). The compound is Mishnaic and comes with both halves already built — the subordinating אף על פי ש in סוכה המעובָּה כמין בית, אף על פי שאין הכוכבים נראים מתוכה – כשרה (Mishnah Sukkah 2:2), and the resuming אף על פי כן in the Tosefta.

In על אף, the אף is a completely different word: the noun meaning anger, wrath, from the root אנ״ף, the אף of חרון אף. The phrase descends from עַל אַף אֹיְבַי תִּשְׁלַח יָדֶךָ (Psalms 138:7), and its sense was in the teeth of the anger — which is why, the Academy notes, early writers were careful to attach it only to nouns denoting people, anger being something people have, exactly as in the idiom על אפו ועל חמתו (after Jeremiah 32:31). Its concessive use is young: Keren Dubnov dates the first signs to Haskalah writing of the nineteenth century, in RAMAG — the Vilna maskil Mordechai Aharon Ginzburg — and by the early twentieth century it had spread to anything at all, person or object.

Alongside them sits the compressed אף ש־, which is אף על פי ש with the middle dropped and belongs to the same written register.

The same story ran twice: למרות itself

The Academy's footnote to that article points out that למרות underwent a parallel career. It too is built on a biblical form meaning defiance and provocation — the infinitive of הִמְרָה with the ה of hif'il dropped — as in לַמְרוֹת עֶלְיוֹן בַּצִּיָּה (Psalms 78:17). It occurs only twice in the whole Bible, that verse and Isaiah 3:8. Its modern revival is attributed to the very same RAMAG, and Dubnov does not rule out foreign influence, German or Russian, on the shape it took.

So the two most ordinary concessives in the language are both nineteenth-century revivals of biblical words for anger and defiance. Neither is classical usage. The difference is only that one of them acquired a ש and the other is still being argued about.

The noun-takers, measured

על אף, חרף and bare למרות all govern a noun phrase. The Academy's dictionary gives חֵרֶף as a preposition glossed למרות, על אף, with no register label — but the counts place it. Measured with one shape down the column, insource:/ X ה/ on Hebrew Wikipedia (17 August 2026, and the figures are floors):

חרף is about seven times rarer than למרות inside encyclopedic prose — the register that already likes it. In conversation you will effectively never hear it.

אם כי, which the dictionaries gloss differently

אם כי is the one item here on which good sources genuinely disagree, and the disagreement is worth seeing rather than papering over. Milog glosses it עם זאת, למרות זאת, אף על פי כן — an adversative, even so. The Academy's own reading list on concessives cites a 1953 study by Nisan Berggrün whose title states the other analysis outright: אם כי = אף על פי ש…, a subordinator. Both readings survive in modern use, and the sentence usually does not force a choice.

The concessive Hebrew forgot

One more, purely for reading. עם היות is a medieval calque of Judeo-Arabic מַע כּוּן, meaning אף על פי ש; it fills Ralbag's fourteenth-century commentaries, and it was still alive in the 1940s — the Academy quotes עם היות שאלת היהודים שאלה לאומית from על המשמר, 11 July 1944. If you meet it in an older text, read it as although.

Register, side by side

Neither of these is better Hebrew. They are aimed at different readers.

Hebrew is also happy to answer a concessive clause in the main clause with ובכל זאת or ואף על פי כן, which English forbids outright; that pattern is measured on concessive clauses.

Common Mistakes

1. Using אף על פי כן to head a clause. The two halves of the Mishnaic pair do opposite jobs: אף על פי ש opens a subordinate clause, אף על פי כן stands inside the main one and opens nothing.

2. Giving חרף a ש. חרף is a preposition and has no clause form at all; a clause has to be turned into a noun phrase, or the connective swapped.

3. Treating אף על פי as a preposition. It looks like one — a little stack of particles, just like על אף — and it is not: אף על פי is only ever completed by ש or by כן.

4. Hearing אם כי as if that. Both words are familiar and both readings are wrong: אם כי is a frozen unit and has nothing conditional about it.

Key Takeaways

• The two אף's are unrelated. In אף על פי it is the particle also, even — the אף of the biblical אף כי. In על אף it is the noun anger (root אנ״ף), from עַל אַף אֹיְבַי תִּשְׁלַח יָדֶךָ, which is why the phrase was first attached only to nouns naming people.
• That history is the reason אף על פי ש־ is unobjectionable while על אף ש־ is a blend editors correct.
• למרות has the same kind of past: the infinitive of הִמְרָה, twice in the Bible, revived in the nineteenth century by the same writer as על אף.
• The Academy does not object to למרות ש־. Its dictionary glosses לַמְרוֹת as אף על פי with no caveat, and one of its articles names למרות ש־ as the connective whose rise displaced עם היות. The objection is the language correctors', as he.wiktionary records.
• על אף, חרף and bare למרות take a noun phrase. חרף is roughly seven times rarer than למרות even in encyclopedic prose (1,696 against 11,411).
• אם כי is glossed two ways by good sources — Milog as the adversative עם זאת, Bergrin's 1953 study as אף על פי ש־ — and both readings are live: הוא הסכים, אם כי לא בשמחה.