If you learn one collocation on this page properly, make it שם לב. It is the most frequent of the three families, it is the only one here with a biblical paper trail and a dictionary entry under its own headword, it carries a preposition that learners drop constantly, exactly as they do with the phrases on collocations with עשה, and it lives a double life — a plain spoken verb, and the word that opens warnings on signs, forms and instructions all over Israel.
שם לב, and the ל that is not optional
Hebrew Wiktionary glosses שם לב as השגיח, הבחין, והיה ערני לגבי עניין מסוים — kept watch, noticed, stayed alert to something — and traces it to the Tanakh, where the same idiom already appears in several shapes: שִׂימוּ לְבַבְכֶם (Deuteronomy 32:46), לֹא יָשִׂימוּ אֵלֵינוּ לֵב (2 Samuel 18:3), שִׂים לִבְּךָ (Ezekiel 44:5), alongside the variants שָׂם עַל לִבּוֹ (Daniel 1:8) and שָׁת לִבּוֹ (Jeremiah 31:20). Its modern derivative תשומת לב, "attention", is on the same entry (checked 21 August 2026).
Modern Hebrew has settled on ל for the thing noticed — one more member of the class of verbs that govern with ל — and the corpus is unambiguous about it. On Hebrew Wikipedia, insource:/ שם לב ל/ returns 354–366 across two runs, while insource:/ שם לב את/ returns 0 — a zero with a live control on the identical frame, which is the only kind of zero worth anything.
אף אחד לא שם לב לשלט הקטן ליד הדלת.
af ekhád lo sam lev lashélet hakatán leyád hadélet
Nobody noticed the small sign next to the door.
שימי לב לשעות הפתיחה, הן השתנו.
sími lev lish'ót haptikhá, hen hishtanú
Check the opening hours — they've changed. (to a woman)
הפרויקט קיבל הרבה תשומת לב בתקשורת.
haproyékt kibél harbé tesúmet lev batikshóret
The project got a lot of attention in the media.
The full paradigm, because you need all of it
| Form | Hebrew | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| past, I | שמתי לב | sámti lev |
| past, you (m. / f.) | שמת לב | sámta lev / samt lev — one spelling, two readings |
| present (m. / f.) | שם לב / שמה לב | sam lev / sáma lev |
| future, we | נשים לב | nasím lev |
| imperative (m. / f. / pl.) | שים לב / שימי לב / שימו לב | sim lev / sími lev / símu lev |
The past "you" row is worth pausing on: שמת לב is a single written string for both genders, and only the voice separates sámta from samt. That is a fact about the whole past tense, not about this phrase — but this is the phrase you will hit it in.
סליחה, לא שמתי לב שאת מחכה.
slikhá, lo sámti lev she'át mekhaká
Sorry, I didn't notice you were waiting. (to a woman)
לא שמת לב שהוא בכלל לא ענה?
lo sámta lev shehú bikhlál lo aná?
Didn't you notice he never answered at all? (to a man)
Those two sentences answer a question the dictionaries leave open: does שם לב take a ש-clause as well as a ל-phrase? It does, and the corpus settles it. insource:/ שם לב שה/ returns 89 on Hebrew Wikipedia, and all six hits sampled are genuine complement clauses — he noticed that the air was denser, Pavlov noticed that the dogs salivated. The terminator matters here: a bare ש would also count every ש-initial noun, which is a different word class entirely.
The rest of the שם family
| Hebrew | English | Register |
|---|---|---|
| שם דגש על sam dagésh al | place emphasis on | neutral to formal |
| שם עין על sam áyin al | keep an eye on | informal |
| שם סוף ל־ sam sof le- | put an end to | neutral, journalistic |
| שם קץ ל־ sam kets le- | put an end to | formal, literary; far commoner in print than שם סוף |
שם קץ and שם סוף mean the same thing and are not interchangeable in tone. In edited prose the formal one dominates — שם קץ 481 against שם סוף 30, same shape, same day — and five sampled hits of each are all the idiom. In speech the proportion reverses, which no encyclopedic corpus can show you.
הקורס שם דגש על שיחה ולא על דקדוק.
hakúrs sam dagésh al sikhá veló al dikdúk
The course puts the emphasis on conversation rather than grammar.
תשים עין על הילדים רגע, אני חוזר מיד.
tasím áyin al hayeladím réga, aní khozér miyád
Keep an eye on the kids a moment, I'll be right back. (m. speaker, to a man; informal)
החוק החדש שם סוף למחלוקת הזאת.
hakhók hekhadásh sam sof lamakhalóket hazót
The new law put an end to this dispute.
ההסכם שם קץ לשנתיים של סכסוך.
haheském sam kets lishnatáyim shel sikhsúkh
The agreement put an end to two years of conflict. (formal, written)
שם עין returns 11 on Hebrew Wikipedia (21 August 2026), and nine of the eleven really are the idiom. Drop the leading space and the identical string returns 49 — because עַיִן also spells Ein, "spring", in place names, and hits of the type מעיין בשם עין כהנא, "a spring called Ein Kahana", swamp it. One character of probe, four times the count, and a different phenomenon underneath. Read the first handful of hits before you believe any number.החזיק: holding out, and two phrases with thin paperwork
החזיק מעמד — hold out, hold up, last — is the solid one: החזיק מעמד 794, מחזיק מעמד 41, and the five hits sampled are all the idiom. The other two in this family need labels rather than confidence.
החזיק טובה ל־ is attested but not modern-neutral. Hebrew Wiktionary carries it under the headword מחזיק לו טובה, tagged לשון חז״ל, and all 7 hits of להחזיק טובה — the infinitive, which is the form this phrase actually appears in — are quotations from rabbinic and older literary Hebrew, in the frame צריכים אנו להחזיק טובה ל־, "we ought to be grateful to". Use it and you are quoting; the everyday word is אסיר תודה, the near-synonym that same entry lists, or simply מודה.
מחזיק אצבעות ל־ — cross one's fingers for — has no entry in Hebrew Wiktionary and turns up 4 times, one of them a newspaper headline. It is real Israeli usage and it takes ל; whether it entered from English is a claim nobody has sourced, so this page does not make it.
המכונית הישנה החזיקה מעמד עוד חורף אחד.
hamekhonít hayeshaná hekhziká ma'amád od khóref ekhád
The old car held out for one more winter.
אני לא יודע כמה זמן עוד אחזיק מעמד ככה.
aní lo yodéa káma zman od akhazík ma'amád kákha
I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. (m. speaker)
אנחנו מחזיקים אצבעות לקבוצה שלך.
anákhnu makhazikím etsba'ót lakvutsá shelkhá
We're keeping our fingers crossed for your team. (to a man)
הפסיק: an infinitive, never a noun
הפסיק takes an infinitive for the activity being stopped — הפסיק לעשן, הפסיק לדבר, הפסיק לעבוד — and the negated present is one of the most useful exaggerations in spoken Hebrew: לא מפסיק ל־, "won't stop -ing". לא מפסיק ל returns 107 and its feminine לא מפסיקה ל 53, so it is not confined to speech.
הפסקתי לשתות קפה בערב, ואני ישן הרבה יותר טוב.
hifsákti lishtót kafé ba'érev, va'aní yashén harbé yotér tov
I've stopped drinking coffee in the evening and I sleep much better. (m. speaker)
הטלפון שלי לא מפסיק לצלצל מהבוקר.
hatélefon shelí lo mafsík letsaltsél mehabóker
My phone hasn't stopped ringing since this morning.
Common Mistakes
1. Marking the object with את. The object of שם לב is introduced by ל, and by nothing else — the zero measured above is exactly this string.
❌ שמתי לב את הטעות רק אחר כך.
Incorrect — שם לב introduces what was noticed with ל: שמתי לב לטעות רק אחר כך. The preposition is part of the phrase and never drops.
✅ שמתי לב לטעות רק אחר כך, כשהדפסתי.
sámti lev lata'út rak akhár kakh, kshehidpásti
I only noticed the mistake afterwards, when I printed it.
2. Stopping in order to smoke. English stop covers both halting and ceasing; Hebrew splits them between two verbs, and the wrong one produces a perfectly good sentence about something else.
❌ עצרתי לעשן לפני שנתיים.
I stopped smoking two years ago
Incorrect as that meaning — the string reads 'I stopped in order to smoke two years ago'. Ceasing an activity is הפסיק plus an infinitive: הפסקתי לעשן לפני שנתיים.
✅ הפסקתי לעשן לפני שנתיים ולא חזרתי.
hifsákti le'ashén lifnéi shnatáyim veló khazárti
I stopped smoking two years ago and never went back.
3. Giving the imperative one form. שים and שימי are different words, and a sign addressed to everybody uses the plural.
✅ שים לב, יש מדרגה בכניסה.
sim lev, yesh madregá baknisá
Watch out, there's a step at the entrance. (to a man)
✅ שימו לב: הקו לא עוצר בתחנה הזאת.
símu lev: hakáv lo otsér batakhaná hazót
Please note: this line does not stop at this station. (a sign)
4. Quoting the rabbis at the coffee machine. Both of these are correct Hebrew and they are not interchangeable.
✅ יש להחזיק טובה לכל מי שהתנדב באותו לילה.
yesh lehakhazík tová lekhól mi shehitnadév be'otó láyla
We owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who volunteered that night. (literary, and a phrase whose corpus hits are all quotations)
✅ אני ממש מודה לכל מי שבא לעזור.
aní mamásh modé lekhól mi shebá la'azór
I'm really grateful to everyone who came to help. (m. speaker — what you would actually say)
Key Takeaways
- שם לב takes ל for what was noticed. Measured on Hebrew Wikipedia, 21 August 2026:
insource:/ שם לב ל/354–366 againstinsource:/ שם לב את/0. - It also takes a ש-clause —
insource:/ שם לב שה/89, six of six sampled genuine — which the dictionary entry does not mention. - The phrase is documented from the Tanakh onward (שִׂימוּ לְבַבְכֶם, שִׂים לִבְּךָ) and gives modern Hebrew the noun תשומת לב.
- שם קץ and שם סוף are the same idiom in two registers; in print the formal one leads 481 : 30.
- שם עין is countable only with the space on both sides:
שם עין11, nine of them the idiom, against 49 unspaced, where place names of the type בשם עין כהנא take it over. - החזיק מעמד is solid. החזיק טובה ל־ is literary and every corpus hit is a quotation; מחזיק אצבעות ל־ has no dictionary entry, four corpus hits, and no sourced etymology.
- הפסיק takes an infinitive, and עצר ל־ means stopping in order to do something — a different sentence entirely.
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