RBSE SS Urdu Literature key terms

The broad category of Urdu prose writing, covering short stories, essays, biographical sketches, and reportage, as distinct from poetry. In the prescribed textbook it labels the prose section.

The Urdu short story: a compact fictional narrative with a single central incident, few characters, and a pointed ending. It differs from the novel in brevity and from the sketch in having a plot.

A formal prose essay that develops one subject in ordered paragraphs, usually with an introduction, argument, and conclusion. School composition exercises in Urdu are commonly set in this form.

A personal, light-toned essay in which the writer's own voice, humour, and opinion dominate over strict argument. It is informal in structure and often digressive, unlike the formal mazmoon.

A biographical sketch or pen-portrait: a short prose piece that captures a real person's appearance, habits, and speech through selected telling details rather than a full life narrative.

A traditional biographical dictionary of poets, arranged by era or alphabet, giving each writer's life, teachers, and sample verses. It is a key source for Urdu literary history.

Literally a school or literary circle; in historiography it names a regional or stylistic grouping of poets, such as the Lucknow or Delhi school, sharing conventions and diction.

The Delhi school of Urdu poetry, centred on the Mughal capital in the eighteenth century, known for sustained ghazal conventions, refined takhallus naming, and masters such as Mir and Sauda.

A lyric poem of five to fifteen couplets, each with its own theme, unified by metre, rhyme, and a repeated radif. Every couplet is called a sher and usually stands alone in meaning.

A couplet: two metrically matched lines forming one complete unit of meaning. In a ghazal each sher is self-contained, so a single couplet can be quoted and understood alone.

The opening couplet of a ghazal, in which both lines carry the qafia and radif. It establishes the rhyme pattern that later couplets repeat in their second line only.

The closing couplet of a ghazal, where the poet usually inserts his or her pen name, the takhallus. It often carries a personal or reflective turn.

The rhyming word or syllable that recurs just before the radif in each couplet of a ghazal. All rhyming words must share the same final sound but differ in the preceding letters.

A word or short phrase repeated unchanged after the qafia at the end of the second line of every ghazal couplet. It must be identical in form throughout the poem.

The pen name a poet adopts and weaves into the last couplet of a ghazal. It serves as the poet's signature and often appears in a phrase like 'Mir says'.

The Urdu poem organised around a single sustained subject or narrative, with thematic unity from line to line, in contrast to the ghazal's independent couplets. It may be rhymed or free verse.

Free verse in Urdu: poetry that abandons fixed rhyme and uniform metre while keeping rhythm and line breaks as its organising devices. It became prominent in the twentieth century.

Blank verse in Urdu: poetry in a regular metre but without rhyme. It sits between traditional rhymed nazm and fully free azad nazm.

The metre of a poem, defined by a fixed pattern of long and short syllables arranged in feet. A couplet is only valid if both lines scan to the same behr.

The analytical scanning of a verse line into its metrical feet to check whether it conforms to the chosen behr. It is a standard exercise in Urdu prosody.

An eighteenth-century Delhi poet, often called the poet of pathos, celebrated for ghazals of love, loss, and Delhi's decline. His simple diction and emotional honesty are frequently examined.

A nineteenth-century Delhi poet famous for dense, philosophical ghazals and witty letters in plain Urdu. His difficult imagery and Persian-influenced style make him a standard subject of appreciation questions.

A twentieth-century poet-philosopher who wrote in Urdu and Persian, urging self-realisation, action, and Muslim revival. His nazms and ghazals are staples of the prescribed poetry syllabus.

A pioneering Urdu-Hindi fiction writer whose short stories and novels depict rural poverty and social injustice with realistic detail. His afsanas are commonly set for study.

The progressive movement in Urdu literature from the 1930s, which held that literature should expose social injustice and serve reform. It reshaped the short story and free verse.

A character in a story or play, revealed through action, speech, and description. Questions often ask how a particular kirdar develops or what it represents in the theme.

The subject or theme of a literary work or of a composition exercise. In exams it may mean the topic set for an essay or the central idea of a prescribed lesson.

Literary criticism: the reasoned evaluation of a text's form, language, and meaning. In this exam it usually means short appreciative comments on a prescribed poem or prose piece.

The line-by-line explanation of a verse or passage, unpacking its literal meaning, imagery, and implied ideas. It is a standard written task in Urdu literature papers.

Rhetorical figures or literary devices used to heighten meaning and effect, such as simile, metaphor, and hyperbole. Identifying them by their Urdu names is often required.

Simile: an explicit comparison between two things using words such as 'like' or 'as'. Both the compared object and the object it is likened to are named in the line.

Metaphor: a comparison in which one thing is stated as if it were another, without a linking word. The borrowed term stands directly for the intended idea.

The rules of Urdu grammar, covering parts of speech, gender, number, case, and sentence order. Grammar questions test correct usage rather than literary interpretation.

A noun: a word naming a person, place, thing, or abstract idea. Urdu grammars further divide it by gender, countability, and whether it is proper or common.

A verb: a word expressing an action or state, which in Urdu agrees with the subject in person, number, and gender. Transitive and intransitive verbs take different auxiliary patterns.

Grammatical gender in Urdu: every noun is either masculine or feminine, and this gender governs the form of adjectives and verbs agreeing with it. Errors here are a common exam trap.

The style of written expression, including sentence construction, cohesion, and appropriate register. Composition marks are awarded for clarity and organisation as much as for content.

The introductory paragraph of an essay, which states the topic and sets the direction of the argument. It should be brief and end with a clear statement of scope.

Letters as a literary form; in Urdu, Ghalib's informal letters are prized for their conversational style and are studied as examples of effective prose composition.

The cursive calligraphic script in which Urdu is normally written and printed, characterised by sloping, connected strokes and a hanging baseline. Reading prescribed texts in Nastaliq is assumed.

Spelling and orthography: the correct writing of words with their proper letters, diacritics, and joined or separate forms. Spelling errors are penalised in written answers.

The Urdu script as a writing system, derived from Persian Naskh-Nastaliq conventions and written right to left. It includes distinctive letters such as te, pe, che, and ze with dots.