יָזִיז (yaziz) — friends with benefits
Etymology
The word יָזִיז belongs to a cluster of Hebrew relationship-vocabulary words whose evolution mirrors profound social changes in Israeli society across the 20th century. The words חָבֵר (friend; boyfriend) and יָדִיד (friend) entered Modern Hebrew from earlier layers of the language via Yiddish, where both served as synonyms. In Hebrew, they began as synonyms too but gradually diverged as social norms evolved.
In the early 20th century, unmarried relationships between men and women were uncommon. In the Labor Zionist movement, some ideological couples rejected marriage as a "bourgeois institution" and chose to live together without formalizing their relationships. Such partners began to be called חָבֵר/חֲבֵרָה ("friend," m./f.) with a possessive marker — "he's my חבר," meaning "my partner." This usage was noted with disapproval by the Revisionist polemicist Ab"a Achimeir in 1940, who described left-wing couples' use of חבר/חברה to mean what ordinary people would call בַּעַל/אִשָּׁה (husband/wife).
As cohabitation and premarital sexual relationships became increasingly common through the 1960s and 1970s — accelerated by the availability of oral contraceptives in Israel from the mid-1960s — the word חבר became more firmly associated with romantic partnership. This created a need for יָדִיד/יְדִידָה to cover platonic cross-gender friendship. By the early 1980s this semantic split was established: יָדִיד/יְדִידָה meant a platonic friend of the opposite sex; חָבֵר/חֲבֵרָה meant a romantic partner. Literary evidence from Zvi Lidsky (1981), Helen Burko (1981), and Gali Ron-Feder (1982) all show characters explicitly distinguishing between the two terms.
The increasing prevalence of yet another relationship type — a friendship that included sex but no romantic commitment — created the need for a new term. This configuration was described by author Zvi Lidsky in 1980 as "a friend, not exactly a friend, just someone, a friend-ish person." The neologism for it was coined by Israeli youth around 1992, and the circumstances of its first print appearance are unusually well-documented. In June 1992, journalist Amit Shaham interviewed a 17-year-old Tel Aviv high school student — and also lead singer of the short-lived rock band "Matilda the Holy" — for the newspaper Hadashot. The student offered a taxonomy of relationship types: ידידה (platonic female friend), אחוקים (closer than a friend, but no sex), יָזִיזִים (friends with benefits — "like friends, but with a זַיִן instead"), and ביחד (actually a couple). The word is a portmanteau of יָדִיד (friend) and זַיִן (penis; to have sex). The following year it appeared in Oded Ahiyasaf's Lexicon of Hebrew and Military Slang with the definition "a fusion of יָדִיד/ה and זַיִן: a friend with whom the relationship is based on friendship and sex without mutual commitment." It was also used by actress Hannah Laslo in describing her relationship with Gabi Gazit in an August 1993 interview. The word's usage grew throughout the 1990s and it is now well-established in Israeli Hebrew.
Key Quotes
"הדירוג הולך ככה: יש ידידה, אבל זה אפלטוני לחלוטין... אם זה סקס ולא אוהבים אחד את השני — קשרים שבנויים רק על סקס — זה יזיזים, כמו ידידים, רק עם זין במקום" — Yadin Horiv (age 17), Hadashot, June 1992
"היינו מה שנקרא יזיזים. אתה יודע. זה היה נוח לשנינו" — Hannah Laslo, Hadashot, August 1993
Timeline
- Early 20th century: חָבֵר/חֲבֵרָה begin to denote unmarried partners in Labor Zionist circles
- 1940: Achimeir publishes critique of the romantic use of חבר/חברה in Ha-Mishkif
- Mid-1960s: Oral contraceptives available in Israel; premarital relationships increase
- 1970s–early 1980s: Semantic split consolidates — יָדִיד = platonic, חָבֵר = romantic partner
- 1980: Zvi Lidsky describes "friends with benefits" configuration in Hi-Society without a word for it
- ~1992: יָזִיז coined in Israeli youth slang as a portmanteau of יָדִיד + זַיִן
- June 1992: First print documentation, in Hadashot interview with Yadin Horiv
- 1993: Word appears in Oded Ahiyasaf's Lexicon of Hebrew and Military Slang
- August 1993: Hannah Laslo uses the word in Hadashot
- 1990s–present: Word becomes established in Israeli Hebrew
Related Words
- יָדִיד/יְדִידָה — (platonic) friend; the first component of the portmanteau
- חָבֵר/חֲבֵרָה — boyfriend/girlfriend; partner
- זַיִן — penis (vulgar); to have sex; the second component of the portmanteau
- אחוקים — more than friends but without sex (other slang relationship term from the same taxonomy)