| Chowkri चौकड़ी | One of the nine rectangular wards of the 1727 Jaipur plan. Two of the nine were displaced by the hill on the north side, which is why the grid is a nine-square scheme that does not look like one on a map. |
| Chaupar चौपड़ | The wide square formed where two of the plan's main streets cross, with a fountain or tank at the centre. Jaipur has three, and they still work as the city's addresses. |
| Rasta रास्ता | A side street in the Jaipur plan, below a bazaar and above a gali in the hierarchy, and named for the trade assigned to it — Maniharon ka Rasta for the bangle makers, Khajane Walon ka Rasta for the stone carvers. |
| Araish or ala gila अरैश / आला गीला | Wet-on-wet lime plaster work — the true fresco technique, in which the pigment is taken into the setting lime. Ala gila translates roughly as "damp niche" and describes the working condition, not the picture. |
| Chejara चेजारा | The mason-plasterer community who laid the araish and, in most Shekhawati towns, painted it as well. |
| Chhipa छींपा | The block-printing community of Bagru, Sanganer and the printing villages. The word means the printer. |
| Dabu दाबू | The mud-and-gum resist paste printed onto cloth to block the dye. Literally "that which presses down", from the act of pressing the block into the paste tray. |
| Harda हरड़ | Myrobalan, used to pre-treat cloth so the mordant will hold. It leaves the ground a warm ivory rather than white, which is how a naturally dyed print can be told from a bleached one. |
| Syahi स्याही | The black dye liquor made by fermenting scrap iron with jaggery for several weeks. The same word means ink. |
| Hundi हुंडी | A bill of exchange payable by a correspondent firm in another town, honoured on reputation rather than on any legal instrument. The device that let a Shekhawati family move money between Calcutta and Churu without moving any. |
| Parta पड़ता | The daily working-out of profit and loss that a firm's manager was expected to send the head of the house — a same-day account of the position, decades before anyone called it management reporting. |
| Bahi-khata बही-खाता | The bound ledger, written in Mahajani script and opened afresh at Diwali, when the old book is closed and worshipped along with the account of the year. |
| Chhatri छतरी | A domed cenotaph over a cremation site. In Shekhawati these carry the best-preserved frescoes, for the practical reason that they are the one building type nobody lived in and nobody repainted. |
| Bas बास | A hamlet named for the family that founded it, as in Kashi ka Bas. The Shekhawati settlement pattern is full of them, and a surname in a place name here is usually literal. |
| Gindad गींदड़ | The Shekhawati Holi dance around the nagara drum, and the season it runs through. |