הִתְפֻּטַּר (hitputtar) — to be involuntarily let go

Etymology

On October 23, 1949, Yisrael Galili delivered a speech at the Kibbutz HaMeuhad conference in Givat Brenner that made linguistic history. The subject of his talk — the importance of collective labor-movement participation in the army — was not what made it historic. What made it historic was that Galili not only coined a new Hebrew verb, הִתְפֻּטַּר, but in doing so created an entirely new binyan (grammatical verb pattern) in the Hebrew verbal system: the hitpu'al (הִתְפֻּעַל).

After the War of Independence, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion began purging the army of its party-affiliated loyalties in order to transform it into a state institution. As a result, many commanders from the pre-state Haganah underground found themselves without a role and outside the military. Galili, himself the most senior of these displaced commanders, described the awkward situation in his speech: you meet a veteran commander in civilian clothes, and you ask — "Did you resign [hitpaTARta]?" He shrugs. "Were you fired [putarta]?" He shrugs again. "I realized he was having trouble finding the right word. So I took the trouble and found a grammatical form that answers the question: 'hitFUTARti' — he should have answered."

Galili's innovation was brilliant in its simplicity. He took the hitpa'el binyan — which characteristically expresses reflexive actions (what one does to oneself) — and fused it with the u-vowel that marks the passive in Hebrew's pu'al and huf'al patterns. The result was a new binyan whose meaning is immediately transparent: a reflexive-passive action — something done to oneself through the compulsion of another. The form communicates "I was let go, and this thing happened to me though I did not choose it."

Not everyone welcomed the new form. In 1951, grammarian Yitzhak Avinery wrote in Al HaMishmar: "The form 'hitputar' has no grammatical basis or justification. Its form implies the opposite of the intended meaning — as if describing someone who wants to be fired and resists it (in order to receive severance pay)... Its head is hitpa'el and its end is pu'al." Despite the prescriptivists, the public adopted הִתְפֻּטַּר immediately. Through the 1950s additional hitpu'al verbs appeared: kibbutz members jokingly said they had been hitNUDDevu (voluntarily volunteered by others) to various roles; newspapers reported that the first Knesset had been hitPUZZerah (dissolved) by Ben-Gurion.

The binyan remains in limited but real use. A recent coinage is הִתְאֻבֵּד (hit'ubbed) — to provide someone suicidal with the means to end their life. This grammatical pattern also has an ancient parallel: Old Akkadian had a similar passive-reflexive binyan, itap'ul (e.g., ittaptuR), strikingly similar to what Galili "invented" independently less than 70 years ago.

Key Quotes

"טרחתי, אפוא, ומצאתי צורה דקדוקית, העשויה לענות על שאלתי: 'התפוטרתי', היה צריך לענות" — Israel Galili, Givat Brenner conference, October 23, 1949

"לצורה 'התפוּטר' אין כל יסוד וצדוק... ראשו התפעל וסופו פוּעל" — Yitzhak Avinery, Al HaMishmar, 1951

Timeline

• October 23, 1949: Galili coins הִתְפֻּטַּר in his Givat Brenner speech; creates the hitpu'al binyan
• 1951: Avinery attacks the form as grammatically invalid
• 1950s: New hitpu'al coinages spread: הִתְנֻדַּב (to be voluntarily volunteered), הִתְפֻּזַּר (to be dissolved)
• Late 20th–21st century: הִתְאֻבֵּד coined on same pattern for assisted suicide enablement
• Scholarly note: Akkadian had an independent passive-reflexive binyan (itap'ul) with nearly identical structure

Related Words

• הִתְפַּטֵּר — to resign voluntarily (hitpa'el; the word that prompted Galili's search)
• פֻּטַּר — to be fired (pu'al passive; the other word that didn't fit)
• הִתְנֻדַּב — to be "voluntarily" assigned (hitpu'al, jocular)
• הִתְפֻּזַּר — to be dissolved (hitpu'al, of the Knesset)
• הִתְאֻבֵּד — to be enabled to commit suicide (hitpu'al, modern)
• hitpu'al binyan — the new grammatical pattern Galili created