shakl

Shakl, written in Arabic as شكل, is a word that denotes form, shape, or appearance. It functions as a basic semantic unit in several languages that borrow the term, including Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish, where it is transliterated as shakl, shakal, şekil, or şekil. The root is the Arabic triliteral sh-k-l, associated with forming, shaping, and the arrangement of parts into a figure.

In Arabic, shakl can refer to the external form of an object or to the way something is arranged. In typography, the term is also used to describe the diacritical marks that indicate vowels and pronunciation, collectively known as tashkeel. These marks guide reading and can alter the perceived shakl of a word.

Across Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, the word retains the core sense of form or shape. In Persian and Urdu, شَکْل (shakl) or شکل is commonly used to mean form, figure, or appearance, and is applied in art, design, geometry, and description of objects. In Turkish, şekil denotes shape or figure and is a standard term in education and everyday language.

The concept of shakl thus spans everyday description of objects and appearances to technical terms in typography and design. Its cross-linguistic presence reflects a shared interest in form, structure, and visual configuration, making shakl a recurring foundational term in discussions of shape and morphology across multiple languages.