وَآخُذُ اللَّفْظَ فِضَّةً فَإِذَا مَا صُغْتُهُ قِيلَ إِنَّهُ ذَهَبُ
I take a word like silver; when I shape it, people call it gold.
Fiḍḍah means silver and dhahab gold, but the speaker is not reporting metalworking. He compares ordinary words to raw material that becomes precious when expertly shaped.
The object of ṣughtuhu is the word, lafẓ. That grammatical clue fixes the craft as literary rather than metallurgical and explains the earlier ambiguity about the husband’s profession.
Semantic distinction exercise
What is being “shaped” in the husband’s verse?