צָהֳרַיִם טוֹבִים

Pronounced tso-ho-RA-yim to-VEEM. The greeting is said as a fixed phrase, with stress on the last syllable of each word.

צָהֳרַיִם טוֹבִים is the standard Hebrew greeting for “good afternoon.” It is used politely when greeting someone in the afternoon, especially in more formal or neutral situations. In everyday spoken Hebrew, people often use simpler greetings like שָׁלוֹם, but צָהֳרַיִם טוֹבִים sounds natural when you want to be a bit more specific about the time of day. The phrase is fixed and is used as a greeting, not as a literal sentence about the afternoon being good. In the example צָהֳרַיִם טוֹבִים, רוֹצֶה לֶאֱכֹל? the greeting introduces a friendly conversation: “Good afternoon, want to eat?”

This is a fixed expression. The adjective appears in the set form used with the greeting, so learners should treat the phrase as a whole rather than as a freely formed grammatical pattern.

In modern Israeli Hebrew, greetings are often flexible and context-dependent. צָהֳרַיִם טוֹבִים is polite and clear, but שָׁלוֹם is often more common overall as a general greeting.