Hiányzol or lekésik: how do you say "I miss you" and "miss" in Hungarian?

"I miss you" is Hiányzol, or in full Hiányzol nekem. Literally it says "you are missing to me". The person you miss is the subject of the verb, and you, the one who misses, go in the dative. That is the main answer, but it covers only one kind of "miss". Missing a train is lekésik (Lekéstem a vonatot), missing a chance is elszalaszt, and missing a target is elhibáz or elvét. None of them is hiányzik.

Hiányzik and hiányol, defined

Hiányzik means "to be missing". It is built from the noun hiány, "lack, absence", plus the verb ending -zik. Wiktionary gives it two senses: "to be absent" and "to be missing, missed", the second "in emotional sense as well". It is intransitive, so it never takes a direct object. And it is an -ik verb, which matters for one form below.

The dative experiencer. The person who feels the absence goes in the dative case, -nak/-nek. Grammars call this person the experiencer. Wiktionary's usage note puts hiányzik in one small group with tetszik ("to be appealing"), ízlik ("to taste good"), kell ("to be needed") and van ("to be had"). In all of them the subject is not someone who acts. It is the thing or person that causes the feeling. If you know how Tetszik nekem works from szeret or tetszik, you already know how Hiányzik nekem works.

• Nagyon hiányzol nekem. I miss you very much. (you are missing to me)
• Ő hiányzik nekünk. We miss him (or her). (he is missing to us)
• Hiányzom neked, ugye? You miss me, don't you? (I am missing to you)

Hiányol is the transitive "miss". It comes from the same noun with the ending -ol. Wiktionary glosses it "to miss (to feel the absence of someone or something)". Here the one who misses is the subject and the missed person is the object, just as in English. Wiktionary calls it "the closer equivalent" of English "to miss". It also says that in everyday speech people use hiányzik instead. Its own example is a man called Robi who misses his wife:

• Robi hiányolja a feleségét. Robi misses his wife. (the word-for-word version)
• Robinak hiányzik a felesége. Robi misses his wife. (the more common way)

So both verbs are correct. The one you hear in conversation, and the one in "I miss you", is hiányzik.

One day, six misses

Take a woman called Anna. Suppose this is her Monday, told in English, and you want to say each "miss" in Hungarian. Here is how each one sorts.

1. She misses the bus by one minute. She was too late for a vehicle, so lekésik, with the margin in -val/-vel: Egy perccel lekéste a buszt.
2. So she misses the meeting. Being too late for an event is also lekésik: Lekéste a megbeszélést. If she had simply not gone, that would be elmulaszt instead.
3. She and a colleague miss each other at the stop. Failing to meet someone is elkerül: Biztosan elkerültük egymást. "We must have missed each other."
4. She misses the date in an email. She read past it by mistake, so elnéz: Elnézte a dátumot.
5. She misses the chance of a free ticket. Letting an opportunity slip is elszalaszt: Elszalasztotta az alkalmat.
6. In the evening she misses home, and her sister. Now it is a feeling, so hiányzik, with Anna in the dative: Hiányzik neki az otthona. She texts her sister Hiányzol!, and her sister answers Te is nekem.

Six kinds of "miss", six different verbs. Only the last line uses hiányzik. A learner who translates every "miss" as hiányzik gets five of the six sentences wrong. The reply in line 6 is explained on én is or nekem is, and otthon as "home" on otthon, itthon or haza.

Decision table: which verb for which "miss"

Wiktionary's entry for English "miss" lists Hungarian translations sense by sense. This table sorts them by what the English sentence means. Each row is explained below, with its source.

The pattern is simple. Only the first four rows are about something being absent, and only they use the hiány family. Every other row is about an event: you came too late, you let it pass, you aimed wrong, or you did not see it.

Hiányzik: the verb agrees with the one who is missed

Because the missed person is the subject, the verb takes that person's ending. "I miss you" has a "you" ending. "You miss me" has an "I" ending. This is the reverse of English, and it is the part learners trip over.

Three details in that table are worth a second look.

Hiányzom or hiányzok

Wiktionary gives both. That is the usual -m or -k choice of -ik verbs: hiányzom is the standard form, and hiányzok is common in casual speech. The -ik verbs page explains how the two are judged.

Hiányz- or hiányoz-

The stem has two shapes. Before a vowel ending it is hiányz- (hiányzom, hiányzik). Before most consonant endings an o comes back: hiányoztok, hiányoznak, hiányoztam, hiányozni. The odd one out is the third person past, hiányzott. So "you were missed" is hiányoztál, but "he was missed" is hiányzott. "I'll miss you" uses the infinitive with fog: Hiányozni fogsz, "you will be missing", as shown on the future tense page.

Nekem is often left out

Wiktionary prints the dative in brackets: Nagyon hiányzol [nekem]. So Hiányzol alone is already "I miss you": said to someone, the speaker is the one who misses. Add nekem for emphasis, or to make clear who misses whom. For other people, name them in the dative: Péternek hiányzik a kutyája, "Péter misses his dog".

The verb agrees with the missed thing, not with the person missing it. So if what you miss is plural, the verb is plural: Hiányoznak nekem a gyerekeim, "I miss my children". The same rule holds for tetszik: Tetszenek nekem ezek a cipők.

When hiányol is the right choice

Hiányol is an ordinary transitive verb. It takes the definite conjugation with a definite object (hiányolja a feleségét), and "I miss you" with it is the -lak/-lek form, hiányollak. It is not wrong. But Wiktionary describes hiányzik as the verb "used in everyday speech" for missing a person, an animal or an object. It calls the hiányzik sentence "the more common way". The phrasebook entry for "I miss you" gives only one Hungarian translation: hiányzol.

So the choice comes down to the subject. If the one who misses has to be the subject, as in Robi hiányolja a feleségét, you need hiányol. In every other case, and always for "I miss you", use hiányzik.

"Absent" and "missing from": hiányzik without feelings

The first sense of hiányzik has no emotion in it at all. Wiktionary glosses it "to be absent", with the synonym távol van, "to be away". So Ki hiányzik? is "Who is absent?". The verbal noun hiányzás is listed as a synonym of hiány, "absence", and a hiányzó is "the absent person".

With -ból/-ből, the "out of" case from the inner local cases, it means "to be missing from". Wiktionary's "miss" entry lists it for the sense "to lack something". A quotation from Endre Ady (1899) in the hiányzik entry shows the frame: Ha hiányzik páholyából / Az az édes, barna lány, "If that sweet brown-haired girl is missing from her (theatre) box". The thing that is missing is still the subject:

• Hiányzik egy oldal a könyvből. A page is missing from the book.
• Hiányzik belőle a só. It needs salt. (the salt is missing from it)

The adjective hiányzó means "missing": a hiányzó láncszem, "the missing link".

Missing a train or an event: lekésik and lemarad

Lekésik is késik, "to be late", with the prefix le-. Wiktionary gives two senses.

For a vehicle or a connection, it takes the accusative. The margin you missed it by goes in -val/-vel:

• Mindjárt lekéssük a vonatot! We're going to miss the train!
• Csak fél perccel késtük le a vonatot. We only missed the train by half a minute.

In the second sentence the prefix has moved behind the verb, because fél perccel is in focus. That is the normal behaviour of verbal prefixes.

For an event or an opportunity, both the accusative and -ról/-ről are possible. Wiktionary gives the pair Lekésték az előadást and Lekéstek az előadásról, both "They were late for the performance". With -ról the verb has no object, so it is indefinite (lekéstek). With the accusative it is definite (lekésték).

Lemarad, built from marad, "stay", is the other verb Wiktionary lists. Wiktionary glosses it "to be late (for something), to miss something". The thing goes in -ról/-ről from the surface cases: Lemaradtam a repülőről, "I missed the plane". Wiktionary marks it intransitive, so it never takes an object.

One trap: lekésik is also an ordinary verb form. Wiktionary lists it as the definite third person plural of the same verb, "they miss it". Context tells the two apart.

Missing a chance or a duty: elszalaszt and elmulaszt

When nobody was late and the thing simply passed, use elszalaszt or elmulaszt. Wiktionary lists both under "to fail to attend" in its "miss" entry.

Elszalaszt is glossed "to miss (to let something slip, to fail to achieve or attain)". Its example is the set phrase elszalasztja az alkalmat, "to miss the opportunity". It also has a second, unrelated sense: "to send someone to fetch something".

Elmulaszt is glossed "to miss (opportunity)" and also "to neglect (duty), to fail to do something". So it is the verb for a duty you failed to carry out. That includes a meeting you should have attended, or a deadline: Elmulasztotta a határidőt, "He missed the deadline". Neither entry ranks the two for chances, and this page does not either.

Missing a target: elhibáz, elvét, eltéveszt, mellémegy

For "fail to hit", Wiktionary's "miss" entry lists four verbs. Three of them take the target as an object:

• Elhibázta a célt. He missed the target. (Wiktionary's example for elhibáz)
• Elvétette a célt. He missed the target. (elvét, glossed "to miss the target")

The third, eltéveszt, has no entry of its own in the English Wiktionary. It appears in the "miss" list, and as a synonym of elnéz in the sense "to see something incorrectly by mistake". The Hungarian Wiktionary translates it as English "mistake".

The fourth works the other way round. Mellémegy, literally "goes beside it", has the shot or the liquid as its subject. The Hungarian Wiktionary defines it as something not getting where it was meant to go, but beside it: Vigyázva öntsd, mert mellémegy!, "Pour carefully, or it'll miss!"

Missing what you should have seen

For "overlook, fail to notice", Wiktionary lists four ways: elnéz, nem vesz észre, elkerüli a figyelmét, and elsiklik or átsiklik (a figyelme) ... fölött, "(his attention) slides over ...".

• Elnéztem a dátumot. I misread the date. (elnéz, "to overlook, to see something incorrectly")
• Nem vettem észre a hibát. I missed the mistake. (észrevesz = notice)
• Ez elkerülte a figyelmemet. That escaped my notice. (the thing is the subject)

Elnéz has other senses too. One is "to excuse": Nézd el neki, "Excuse him". Its noun elnézés gives Elnézést!, "Excuse me", set against bocsánat on elnézést or bocsánat.

Elkerül covers two more English "misses". Its first sense is "to avoid, steer clear of": Elkerülte a dugót, "She missed the traffic jam". Its second is "to fail to meet someone". Wiktionary's example is the one from Anna's day: Én is ott voltam, de nem láttalak. Biztosan elkerültük egymást, "I was there too but I didn't see you. We must have missed each other." For escaping trouble, informal Hungarian also has megúszik, "to get away with": Megúsztuk!, "We got away with it!"

Not understanding is a different verb again. "You're missing the point" is about understanding, and Wiktionary's "miss" entry gives nem ért for it: Nem érted a lényeget.

Five mistakes learners make

1. *Hiányozlak or *Én hiányzom téged for "I miss you". Hiányzik has no object, so there is no -lak form. Say Hiányzol, or with the other verb, Hiányollak.
2. Hiányzom! meant as "I miss (you)". It means "I am missing", that is, "you miss me". The ending belongs to the person who is missed.
3. *Hiányzik nekem a gyerekeim. The children are the subject, so the verb is plural: Hiányoznak nekem a gyerekeim.
4. *Hiányzott nekem a busz for "I missed the bus". That says you longed for the bus. Being too late is Lekéstem a buszt or Lemaradtam a buszról.
5. *Én is in reply to Hiányzol. That means "I am missing too". The reply copies the cases: Te is nekem.

What this page does not settle

The table covers the kinds of "miss" a learner needs first, not every idiom. "Miss the boat", "miss a beat" and similar phrases need their own look-up. Within some rows the sources list several verbs without ranking them. That goes for elhibáz, elvét and eltéveszt for a target, elszalaszt and elmulaszt for a chance, and lekésik and lemarad for a train. This page gives no ranking for them either. Nothing fetched for this page says how formal hiányol sounds, only that hiányzik is the everyday verb, so treat hiányol as correct but less common. Finally, "Miss" as a title is a noun, not a verb. Wiktionary translates it as kisasszony, which is covered on nő, asszony or hölgy.

Sources and further reading

• Wiktionary, "hiányzik": the senses "to be absent" and "to be missing, missed", the examples Hiányzom neked, ugye?, Nagyon hiányzol [nekem] and Ő hiányzik nekünk, the Ady quotation, the usage note on hiányol and the dative experiencer, and the full conjugation
• Wiktionary, "hiányol", "hiány" and "hiányzó": the transitive "miss", the noun, and the participle "missing" and noun "absent person"
• Wiktionary, "miss" (Hungarian translations for each verb sense, and kisasszony for the noun) and "I miss you"
• Wiktionary, "lekésik", "késik" and "lemarad": case frames and the train, performance and plane examples
• Wiktionary, "elszalaszt" and "elmulaszt": missing an opportunity, neglecting a duty
• Wiktionary, "elhibáz" and "elvét": missing a target; Hungarian Wiktionary, "mellémegy": definition and example
• Wiktionary, "elnéz", "észrevesz", "elkerül" and "megúszik": overlooking, noticing, avoiding, missing each other, getting away with it

Frequently asked questions