UPMSP Intermediate Urdu key terms

Urdu prose, one of the two main divisions of literature alongside poetry; in the UPMSP Intermediate course it covers essays, short stories, sketches and biographical writing.

A prose essay that develops a single theme in ordered paragraphs, usually with an introduction, body and conclusion; students are asked to write one in the composition section.

The Urdu short story: a compact narrative with plot, character, setting and a turning point, usually built around a single incident or emotional crisis.

A long traditional narrative in ornate prose, mixing romance, adventure and marvels, told through a narrator; the ancestor of later Urdu fiction.

A character in a story or play; exam answers often require describing a character's traits, motives and role in developing the plot.

The setting or atmosphere of a literary work - time, place and social surroundings that shape the characters' behaviour and the story's mood.

Satire and humour: tanz is corrective ridicule that exposes faults, while mizah is gentler comedy that provokes laughter without harsh criticism.

A literary sketch: a short prose portrait that captures a real person's appearance, speech and habits through selected telling details.

A travelogue - a prose account of a journey recording places, people, customs and the writer's impressions, often blending information with personal reflection.

Urdu poetry written in continuous lines on a single theme, without the strict couplet-by-couplet independence of the ghazal; includes narrative, descriptive and free verse forms.

A poem of usually five to fifteen couplets in one metre, each couplet self-contained, with a shared rhyme and refrain; the opening couplet rhymes in both lines.

A couplet - the basic unit of Urdu poetry, consisting of two lines (misra) that together complete a thought or image.

A single line of verse; a couplet has two misras, and the first line of a ghazal's opening couplet is called misra-e-oola.

Another word for a couplet, especially in the context of the ghazal and of narrative mathnawi poetry; also used for a verse quoted as evidence.

The opening couplet of a ghazal, in which both lines carry the rhyme and refrain, setting the pattern the rest of the poem follows.

The closing couplet of a ghazal, in which the poet usually inserts his or her pen name (takhallus) and rounds off the poem.

The refrain in a ghazal: a word or short phrase repeated after the rhyme at the end of every couplet's second line, and in both lines of the matla.

The rhyme element in a ghazal - the consonant-and-vowel pattern immediately preceding the radeef, which must be repeated with different letters across couplets.

The pen name a poet adopts and weaves into the last couplet of a ghazal, allowing readers to identify the author.

The metre of a poem - the fixed pattern of long and short syllables that governs every line; a ghazal keeps one behr throughout.

The exercise of scanning a verse to identify its metre by marking long and short syllables; a common practical question in the grammar section.

Free verse in Urdu: poetry that abandons fixed metre and rhyme while keeping rhythm and imagery, associated with twentieth-century experiments in form.

Blank verse in Urdu - poetry written in a consistent metre but without rhyme, often used for longer narrative or reflective poems.

A long narrative poem in rhyming couplets, each couplet with its own rhyme, used for romances, epics and didactic tales.

A formal ode in a single metre and rhyme, typically praising a patron; its classical sections include the opening, the praise and the petition.

An elegy, especially the long narrative poems commemorating the martyrs of Karbala; a major genre in Urdu poetry with its own conventions.

Grammar rules of Urdu - the study of word classes, gender, number, case, sentence structure and correct usage tested through correction and fill-in items.

A noun: a word naming a person, place, thing or idea; Urdu grammars further classify nouns by gender, number and whether they are proper, common or abstract.

A verb - the word expressing an action or state; Urdu verbs agree with the subject or object in gender, number and person depending on tense.

A particle or function word such as a preposition, conjunction or postposition; it carries grammatical relation rather than independent meaning.

An adjective - a word that describes or qualifies a noun, agreeing with it in gender, number and case in Urdu usage.

An idiom: a fixed phrase whose meaning cannot be derived from its individual words; candidates are often asked to use one in a sentence.

A proverb - a short traditional saying expressing accepted wisdom; exam items ask for its meaning or for a situation where it applies.

Composition: the section of the paper requiring candidates to write letters, essays, applications, reports or summaries in correct and appropriate Urdu.

A letter; the exam distinguishes personal letters from formal ones such as applications, and tests layout, salutation and register.

Explanation or commentary on a verse or prose passage, unpacking its meaning, imagery and poetic devices; a standard long-answer question type.

The specific task of explaining a couplet in prose: first its literal sense, then its deeper meaning and the devices that create it.

Metaphor: applying a word to something it does not literally denote in order to suggest a likeness, as when a beloved is called a rose.

Simile: an explicit comparison between two things using a word such as 'like' or 'as', unlike metaphor which states the comparison directly.

A foundational figure of modern Urdu and Hindi fiction, known for realistic short stories and novels depicting rural and urban Indian life and social injustice.

An Urdu humourist and essayist celebrated for witty, satirical prose sketches; a standard author in intermediate prose syllabi.

A master of the Urdu marsiya, whose long elegies on Karbala are admired for narrative power, characterisation and vivid descriptive passages.

A nineteenth-century Urdu and Persian poet whose ghazals are prized for philosophical depth, originality of imagery and complex, layered meaning.

Poet and philosopher whose Urdu and Persian verse calls for self-realisation, action and renewal of the Muslim community; his nazms are widely taught.

A reading-comprehension text not studied in class, followed by questions on its main idea, details, vocabulary and inference, testing independent reading skill.