Hebrew has taken in Google, SMS, format, flirt, upgrade and a few hundred other words and turned them into ordinary conjugating verbs. Nearly all of them landed in pi'el. This page makes that claim precise — including the part most references get wrong — and then shows the machine working.
What the sources actually say
The popular version is "new verbs go to pi'el and hitpa'el". 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 — שחור "black" gives הִשְׁחִיר, and the slang noun פליק gives הִפְלִיק, where the hif'il frame keeps the base word intact.
Bolozky documents live hif'il niches: inchoatives over colours and physical qualities — הִבְרִיא "got better", הִשְׁמִין "put on weight", הִרְזָה "lost weight" — and loan verbs whose consonant cluster survives better there, הִשְׁפְּרִיץ, הִסְנִיף. His 2007 summary is the key one: hif'il remains the preferred causative in literary Hebrew while pi'el has taken over agentive verbs colloquially. Hif'il's retreat is register-conditioned, not closure.
Put together, those two give the whole modern picture — pi'el as the default, hif'il alive but selected for morpho-phonological reasons rather than freely, and hitpa'el taking the intransitives.
And pa'al is residual rather than dead: Bolozky (1978) reports knowing of only two recent denominative pa'al verbs, gamáz and kharáp "to nap". Two is not zero. nif'al takes nothing at all.
Why pi'el wins
Bat-El's explanation is structural rather than stylistic. Three properties:
It adds no derivational consonant — among the binyanim you can actually choose for an active verb. nif'al adds a נ, hif'il a ה, hitpa'el a whole הת; pi'el adds nothing, so a borrowed consonant string stays visible right through the paradigm. (pu'al adds none either, but pu'al is never a choice — it is pi'el's automatic passive.)
It is neutral as to transitivity, so it hosts whatever argument structure the new verb arrives with.
It takes a fourth radical, which matters because loanwords usually arrive with four or more consonants — see four-radical pi'el verbs.
Note what pi'el does not offer: a fixed stem. It alternates like everything else, dibér against yedabér. What stays put is the consonant frame, and for a borrowed word that is the part that has to survive.
The machine, on one verb
Take SMS. Strip it to consonants — s-m-s — and drop it into the pi'el frame. Pealim files it under the root ס־מ־ס and marks the entry slang.
| Form | Pointed | Written | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Past — אני | סִימַּסְתִּי | סימסתי | simásti |
| Past — הוא | סִימֵּס | סימס | simés |
| Past — היא | סִימְּסָה | סימסה | simsá |
| Past — הם / הן | סִימְּסוּ | סימסו | simsú |
| Present m.sg. / f.sg. | מְסַמֵּס · מְסַמֶּסֶת | מסמס · מסמסת | mesamés · mesaméset |
| Present m.pl. / f.pl. | מְסַמְּסִים · מְסַמְּסוֹת | מסמסים · מסמסות | mesamsím · mesamsót |
| Future — אני / הוא | אֲסַמֵּס · יְסַמֵּס | אסמס · יסמס | asamés · yesamés |
| Imperative m.sg. / f.sg. | סַמֵּס! · סַמְּסִי! | סמס! · סמסי! | samés · samsí |
| Infinitive | לְסַמֵּס | לסמס | lesamés |
Read the Written column: s-m-s is intact and in order in every cell. That is the whole trick. One gap is worth noticing — Pealim prints no pu'al for this verb. A brand-new slang verb has a full active paradigm long before anyone needs its passive.
סימסתי לך אתמול בערב ולא ראית?
simásti lekhá etmól ba'érev veló ra'íta?
I texted you last night — didn't you see it? (informal, to a man)
תגגלי את זה, זה לוקח שנייה.
tegaglí et ze, ze lokéakh shniyá
Just google it, it takes a second. (informal, to a woman)
The modern set, marked honestly
| Verb | Means | Built on | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| טִלְפֵּן | phoned | טלפון | neutral; ויקימילון marks the entry עברית חדשה |
| תִּרְגֵּם · אִרְגֵּן · פִּרְסֵם | translated · organised · published | older layers | neutral, unmarked everywhere |
| שִׁדְרֵג | upgraded | דֶּרֶג "rank" — visible in it, but no dictionary states the derivation | neutral — no dictionary marks it |
| מִחְזֵר | recycled | מַחְזוֹר "cycle" | neutral |
| אִתְחֵל | booted, initialised | הַתְחָלָה | domain-specific: computing |
| סִימֵּס | texted | SMS | slang — so marked by Pealim and ויקימילון |
| גִּיגֵּל | googled | slang — so marked by Pealim and ויקימילון | |
| פְלִרְטֵט | flirted (עם) | flirt | see below |
| פִרְגֵּן | was warmly generous about someone's success | — | see below |
Two cautions about that last column, because register is where unsourced tables do the most damage.
Milog applies no register labels at all, so an entry there establishes that a verb exists, not that it is neutral. Pealim and ויקימילון do label, and their labels are what the table reports.
Neither פרגן nor פלרטט is marked as slang. Pealim glosses פרגן firgén, "to encourage, to embolden", and פלרטט "to flirt with someone (עם)", both untagged; Milog gives פרגן "שיבח או החמיא לזולתו" with three ordinary examples; ויקימילון has no entry for either. They are colloquial-feeling words with no dictionary support for calling them slang, and saying so beats guessing.
מי פרגן לך על זה? אף אחד לא אמר מילה.
mi firgén lekhá al ze? af ekhád lo amár milá
Who gave you any credit for that? Nobody said a word. (to a man)
שדרגתי לחבילה הגדולה ובסוף לא השתמשתי בה.
shidrágti lakhavilá hagdolá uvasóf lo hishtamáshti ba
I upgraded to the big package and ended up never using it.
אתחלתי את הראוטר שלוש פעמים והחיבור עדיין נופל.
itkhálti et hara'úter shalósh pe'amím vehakhibúr adáyin nofél
I've rebooted the router three times and the connection still drops.
פרסמנו את המכרז ביום ראשון וכבר יש עשרים הצעות.
pirsámnu et hamikhráz beyóm rishón ukhvár yesh esrím hatsa'ót
We put the tender out on Sunday and there are already twenty bids.
The Academy and the street
It is tempting to write that the Academy of the Hebrew Language proposes replacements and the street ignores them. The record is more mixed than that, and it is domain-conditioned.
Where the street supplied the verb. ויקימילון credits מִסְרוֹן, the Hebrew word for a text message, to the Academy in תשס״ד (2003–04). The Academy gave the noun; the verb that exists, לְסַמֵּס, was built by speakers off the English acronym — ויקימילון states it outright: נגזר מראשי התיבות SMS. Same with גִּיגֵּל, of which ויקימילון says only הפועל נוצר משמו של מנוע החיפוש גוגל, במשקל פיעל, "formed from the name of the search engine Google, in the pi'el mishkal". No institution was involved. Pealim does carry a rival verb built on the Hebrew noun — מִסְרֵר "to text" — and ויקימילון lists it as a synonym of סִמֵּס. Both are on the books. Only one is in use: Hebrew Wikipedia, a deliberately formal corpus, has sixteen pages containing לסמס and none containing למסרר.
Where the institution supplied it. אִתְחֵל "boot up, initialise" came out of the Academy's own terminology work: ויקימילון credits the noun אִתְחוּל to the Academy's מילון למונחי טכנולוגיית המידע, and the verb goes with it, on the same consonants as הַתְחָלָה "a start". It is in ordinary use among Israeli computer users.
And the sharpest datum cuts the other way. מונית, the everyday word for a taxi, was not an institutional coinage at all — ויקימילון credits it to דוד רמז and יוסף בס — and it displaced the loanword טקסי, which ויקימילון now files only as the foreign (לעז) synonym. Coinages win or lose on whether an international loanword got there first, not on who proposed them.
קיבלתי מסרון מהבנק שהחשבון בחריגה.
kibálti misrón mehabánk shehakheshbón bakharigá
I got a text from the bank saying the account is overdrawn. (מסרון is the official word; in speech people say SMS or הודעה)
Common Mistakes
1. Sending a new intransitive to pi'el. The default is a default, not a rule. On a root that has both, the pi'el is the one that takes an object and the hitpa'el is the one that does not — ס־ט־ל, borrowed into Israeli slang, has the pair in full, and Milog carries both. Say הוא מסטל for "he gets stoned" and you have picked the transitive member.
שתי בירות מסטלות אותו לגמרי.
shtei birót mesatlót otó legamréi
Two beers get him completely off his face. (pi'el — the beers do it to him; slang)
הוא מתמסטל אחרי שתי בירות ונרדם על הספה.
hu mitmastél akharéi shtei birót venirdám al hasapá
He's off his face after two beers and falls asleep on the sofa. (hitpa'el — he is the one it happens to; slang)
2. Building a pa'al from a loanword. The instinct is reasonable — pa'al looks like the simplest binyan — and it produces nothing usable.
❌ אני גוגל את זה עכשיו
Incorrect — there is no pa'al on ג־ג־ל, and Hebrew does not verb a loanword in pa'al. It is pi'el: אני מגגל את זה עכשיו.
✅ אני מגגל את זה עכשיו, שנייה.
aní megagél et ze akhsháv, shniyá
I'm googling it now, one sec. (m. speaker, informal)
3. Reaching for hif'il to make a coinage causative. A four-radical root will not fit the hif'il mould.
❌ השדריגו לי את החבילה בלי לשאול
Incorrect — Pealim returns nothing for השדריג. ש־ד־ר־ג has four radicals, and four-radical roots take pi'el: שדרגו לי את החבילה.
✅ שדרגו לי את החבילה בלי לשאול אותי בכלל.
shidregú li et hakhavilá bli lish'ól otí bikhlál
They upgraded my package without asking me at all.
4. Assuming the official noun brought a verb with it. It usually did not.
❌ מסרנתי לך אתמול בערב
Incorrect — the Academy coined the noun מסרון, but there is no verb מסרן; Pealim finds only the unrelated noun סֶרֶן. The verb speakers built is סימסתי, and the rare book form is מסררתי.
✅ סימסתי לך אתמול בערב, לא קיבלת?
simásti lekhá etmól ba'érev, lo kibálta?
I texted you last night — didn't you get it? (informal, to a man)
Key Takeaways
- pi'el is the default mould for a new Hebrew verb — but the default, not the only option. Bat-El (2013) is explicit that it is "by no means the only one".
- hitpa'el takes the new intransitives; hif'il is narrowed but alive, holding inchoatives (הבריא, השמין, הרזה) and cluster-preserving loans (השפריץ, הסניף), and Bolozky (2007) finds its retreat register-conditioned — literary Hebrew still prefers it.
- pa'al is essentially closed (Bolozky 1978 knows of gamáz and kharáp) and nif'al is closed outright.
- Pi'el wins for three structural reasons: no derivational consonant among the active binyanim, transitivity-neutral, and hosts a fourth radical. Its consonant frame survives the whole paradigm even though its vowels alternate.
- The mechanism: strip the source word to consonants and drop them in — SMS → ס־מ־ס → סימסתי, מסמס, לסמס.
- Register must be sourced. Milog carries no labels; Pealim and ויקימילון mark סימס and גיגל as slang, and mark פרגן and פלרטט as nothing at all.
- The Academy-versus-street picture is mixed: the street supplied לסמס and גיגל, the Academy supplied אתחל, and מונית — a private coinage credited to דוד רמז — beat the loanword outright.
Now practice Hebrew
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- Four-Radical Pi'el Verbs: תרגם, טלפן, ארגן, פרסםB1 — A fourth root letter fills the slot a dagesh fills in דיבר, so nothing is doubled and no new paradigm is needed — but the spelling changes, and the yod of דיברתי disappears.
- בניין התפעל: Reflexive, Reciprocal, ProcessA2 — The one binyan you can spot from across the room — הת in the past and infinitive, מת in the present — with the two exceptions that ruin the trick: מתחיל, which is not hitpa'el at all, and מסתכל, which is hitpa'el with its ת moved.
- Pi'el Built from Nouns: צילם, מיין, תקצבB1 — A large slice of the modern pi'el vocabulary was not inherited as a verb at all — it was built on a noun you already know, sometimes swallowing that noun's own prefix letter into the root, which is exactly why looking these verbs up by root fails.