# חבל על הזמן



## Aoyama

I often hear this expression (notably in recent Israeli movies) "haval al hazman", which literally should mean "(it's) a waste of time". But the actual meaning must be different. What is it ?


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## origumi

http://he.wiktionary.org/wiki/חבל_על_הזמן


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## hadronic

How could this expression go from "waste of time" to "fantastic" ??


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## mediterraneo24

A few years back, when I was a kid, I remember it meant a waste of time.
Now it means both a waste of time and something great depending on the context.


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## OsehAlyah

Aoyama said:


> I often hear this expression ......



When I was in Israel a couple of years ago I heard this expression, pretty much every other sentence from just about everyone. And the meaning varied from something incredibly awesome to something incredibly lame. Latter being somewhat more predominant.
To this day it brings a smile to my face, when I hear it as it reminds me of my trip, and how saturated it was with it.


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## origumi

osehalyah said:


> when i was in israel a couple of years ago i heard this expression, pretty much every other sentence from just about everyone.


יש מצב שככה היה בימים שחבל על הזמן היה פצצות לגבות, אח שלו


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## Aoyama

Thanks for the site origumi.
I guess the meaning would be close to "awesome" (or French "terrible") with an originally negative meaning evolving to a positive or superlative meaning. A phenomenon quite common.
But the "strange" thing is that it is an _expression_ , not a single word.


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## hadronic

or English "ridiculous", that always causes me great troubles.


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## hadronic

origumi said:


> יש מצב שככה היה בימים שחבל על הזמן היה פצצות לגבות, אח שלו


 
Could you please translate this ?


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## origumi

hadronic said:


> Could you please translate this ?


That's 90s slang: "Very much possible that it [the phenomenon that OsehAlyah described] was in the days when the expression חבל על הזמן was extremely exciting, Bro [as "brother" in Black English]".


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## RNBman

hadronic said:


> How could this expression go from "waste of time" to "fantastic" ??



I think it may have evolved from something like:
"Its a waste of time even starting to describe how great it was" ... 
i.e. we will never do it justice in trying to describe how great it is, no matter how long we spend trying to do so.


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## Online_man

Also, if you say to someone  - חבל לך על הזמן (literally: you're waisting your'e time)
you can actually mean - you're going down..


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## MSZ

RNBman said:


> I think it may have evolved from something like:
> "Its a waste of time even starting to describe how great it was" ...
> i.e. we will never do it justice in trying to describe how great it is, no matter how long we spend trying to do so.


I'm with you - that's how I always understood it.


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