What it means
غیبت (gheybat) comes from Arabic غَيْبَة (ghayba), from the root غ-ي-ب (gh-y-b), meaning to be absent, hidden, or unseen. In a school or university setting it means a recorded absence from class. The same word, however, is widely used to mean backbiting or talking about someone behind their back, which is its primary religious and ethical sense in Islamic discourse. Context always disambiguates: in an academic conversation, gheybat means absence; in a social or moral conversation, it means gossip. The opposite of gheybat in the classroom sense is حضور (hozur, presence or attendance). A student who accumulates too many gheybat sessions risks losing the right to sit an exam, a rule known in universities as سقف غیبت (saghf-e gheybat, the absence ceiling).
How to use it
- اگه یه غیبت دیگه داشته باشی، نمیتونی امتحان بدی. (age ye gheybat-e dige dâshte bâshi, nemituni emtehân bedi.) “If you have one more absence, you will not be able to sit the exam.”
- استاد غیبتم رو زد. (ostâd gheybatam ro zad.) “The professor marked me absent.”
- چند تا غیبت مجازم؟ (chand tâ gheybat mojâzam?) “How many absences am I allowed?”
- به خاطر غیبت زیاد از درس حذف شدم. (be khâter-e gheybat-e ziâd az dars hazf shodam.) “Because of too many absences I was dropped from the course.”
Cultural note
Iranian universities typically allow between two and four absences per course per semester before a student is officially dropped or barred from the final exam, and professors are required to track attendance in every session. The dual meaning of gheybat, covering both physical absence and the moral failing of speaking ill of others in one’s absence, is not a coincidence: the Arabic root anchors both ideas in the concept of being unseen or hidden. Students sometimes joke that the only gheybat worth committing is the first kind, not the second.