What does “lif’amim” mean in Hebrew?

The clip’s refrain — לפעמים אני שמח ולפעמים אני עצוב, “sometimes I’m happy and sometimes I’m sad” — runs on לפעמים, literally “at times.” The word inside it, פעם (pa’am), is a workhorse: it means “a time, an occurrence,” so פעמיים is “twice,” עוד פעם is “again,” and אף פעם לא is “never” — not even once. Learn פעם, and a whole family of everyday phrases arrives with it.

פעם also opens every Hebrew fairy tale: היה היה פעם — “once upon a time.” Deeper down, the root carried the idea of a beat or a step — which is why פעמון, the thing that beats, means “bell.”