Implicit and Imaginative Metaphor: Competing Accounts and al-Sakkaki’s Definitions

1. Competing accounts of implicit metaphor

The expression “the claws of death” portrays death as a predatory force. The technical question is more exact: where does the metaphor reside—in an unspoken predator image, in the word for its attribute, or in the assertion that death possesses that attribute?

Different answers can produce different technical labels even while the audience perceives broadly the same frightening image. Merely naming “implicit” or “imaginative” metaphor is therefore insufficient without identifying the analysis behind the label.

The issue turns on distinctions among assigned meaning, imagined predication, and contextual indication. These distinctions allow the different accounts to be compared without conflating them.

2. Implicit metaphor versus reinforcement

أظفار المنية
The claws of death.

The claws point to an unstated predator and thereby make the image intelligible. This is not automatically ordinary reinforcement (tarshīḥ), where an already established metaphor is subsequently strengthened by a feature associated with its source.

If a brave person is explicitly called a “lion” and an additional feature of a lion follows, that feature may reinforce the metaphor. In “the claws of death,” however, no explicit “lion” or “predator” has been supplied. The claws themselves reveal the unspoken source. Indicating an absent source and reinforcing a stated borrowing are distinct operations.

3. Al-Kashshāf’s account: allusion rather than direct naming

إن من أسرار البلاغة ولطائفها أن يسكتوا عن ذكر الشيء المستعار
One subtlety of rhetoric is to leave the borrowed thing unnamed.

On this account, the expression introduces an associated feature or consequence instead of stating the source image directly, allowing the hearer to recover it. The mental journey from sign to image is part of the rhetorical force.

Calling a brave man a “lion” directly brings strength to mind. Describing a characteristic connected with a predator can evoke the same source indirectly. Such concealment is not merely stylistic omission; it is a systematic method of figurative indication.

4. A brave man “preying upon his rivals”

شجاع يفترس أقرانه
A brave man falls upon his peers as a predator does upon prey.

The man is engaged in real combat, but the verb “preys upon” evokes the behaviour of a hunting beast. The hearer can recover a lion-like source image without seeing the noun “lion” expressly stated.

The visible grammatical expression and the mental picture must be kept distinct. The man is not literally an animal; his fierce attack is represented through predatory behaviour. For the indirect account, this suggestion by an associated action explains the effectiveness of implicit metaphor.

5. What is actually expressed in “claws of death”?

The expression can be separated into three elements:
1. Overt words: both “death” and “claws” are stated.
2. Unstated image: the predatory animal is not named.
3. Intended force: death is depicted as gripping its victim inescapably.

If “claws” is interpreted as a sign directing the hearer to the predator, the analysis emphasizes movement from attribute to source. If the focus is the imagined act of assigning claws to death, the analysis concerns figurative predication. These are related but technically different explanations.

6. The poetic example of awakening from desire

صحا القلب عن سلمى وأقصر باطله
The heart recovered from its infatuation with Salmā and ceased its misguided preoccupation.

The expression “ṣaḥā” evokes waking up or becoming sober. The heart was not literally intoxicated by wine; excessive attachment is pictured as intoxication, and release from it is represented as becoming sober.

The technical problem is to determine whether a word has been shifted to a new meaning or whether an image is first mentally posited and its attributes subsequently expressed. Actual intoxication, the compared emotional condition, and the borrowed wording are analytically distinct.

7. The “horses and mounts of youth” image

وعُرِّيَ أفراسُ الصبا ورواحله
And the horses and riding animals of youth were stripped of their gear.

Youth is represented as a stage with horses and mounts available for a journey. These suggest the impulses, strength, and movements associated with youth; the removal of their equipment conveys that this stage has passed.

This is more vivid than simply saying “youth ended.” A travel-like scene is created through rider, mount, equipment, and mobility. Its components do not require literal animals and saddles. Their function is to build a coherent imagined scene and evoke associated aspects of the target.

8. A shared interpretive structure

“The claws of death” portrays an overpowering seizure, while “the mounts of youth” depicts the passage of youth as the end of a journey. In both, however, the target is stated and is equipped with something belonging to a different conceptual scene.

Claws become meaningful through a predator image; the mounts of youth through a journey or travel image. An associated attribute serves as a key to the fuller metaphorical construction.

The examples should still be analyzed individually. Their precise classification depends on wording, attribution, context, and original lexical meaning; merely encountering an animal-related word does not settle the type of metaphor.

9. Youth’s imagined equipment and its actual qualities

In “the mounts of youth,” horses are not being asserted as physically attached to youth. Speed, vitality, and desire are intelligible qualities of youth, expressed through the equipment of a journey.

If the properties are analyzed as genuine qualities of the target, one explanation follows. If the horses and mounts are treated as independently imagined objects, another explanation follows. The technical dispute concerns which elements are actual attributes and which are imaginative constructions.

The distinction between external actuality and mental imagery therefore remains central. A metaphor need not assert the literal existence of its imagery in order to communicate effectively.

10. Imaginative versus realizable attributes

The terms imaginative and realizable do not merely describe grammatical form. An imaginative account assigns an attribute meaningful within the picture but not literally possessed by the target. A realizable account identifies a quality that can genuinely characterize the subject.

Death has no physical claws, yet its severity and inescapable power can be meaningfully described. Thus an imagined bodily attribute and the real condition expressed through it belong to different analytical levels.

The issue is not whether imaginary anatomy is a literal report. It is which genuine quality is conveyed through which imagined device.

11. Three analytical possibilities in the examples

Three analytical possibilities should be distinguished:
1. Primarily imaginative: the force comes from an imagined property absent from the target, as in death’s physical claws.
2. Realizable meaning: the purpose is an intelligible attribute of the target, such as force in battle or the vigour of youth.
3. A dual reading: an imagined scene expresses a genuine psychological or practical condition.

The third need not mean that two contradictory literal propositions are asserted. A vehicle of expression can be imaginary while the quality conveyed is real; precise classification still depends on the contextual and theoretical analysis.

12. The utterance and the mental representation

Some accounts locate implicit metaphor in the unstated comparison; others focus on the figurative employment of an expression. Much confusion comes from treating an overt word and a mentally reconstructed source as the same kind of item.

“Death” is overt, but the predator is inferred. “Claws” is overt, but literal anatomical claws are not asserted of death. Word, assigned sense, predication, and overall image must be considered separately.

The analytical question is not only “which word is metaphorical?” but also how the hearer reaches the unstated source and what sort of attribution the sentence performs.

13. Why definitions of literal and figurative use matter

The disagreement over implicit metaphor leads to a closer definition of literal and figurative use. If a word retains its original meaning while its attribution is imagined, it is not immediately clear whether the whole expression should be treated as lexical, intellectual, or some other figurative phenomenon.

Three notions must be separated: assignment (waḍʿ) relates an expression to a conventionally assigned meaning; use (istiʿmāl) is the speaker’s employment of that expression; interpretive transfer (taʾwīl) connects one conceptual domain to another through a claimed relation.

The following definitional restrictions are intended to clarify such cases rather than add merely decorative words.

14. Al-Sakkākī’s definition of literal usage

بالكلمة المستعملة فيما وضعت له من غير تأويل في الوضع
A word used for what it was assigned to denote, without interpretive adjustment to that assignment.

The definition contains three parts: the word, use in an assigned sense, and absence of interpretive adjustment to assignment. Merely recognizing a familiar lexical sense is not enough if the theory allows a claimed extension of the category.

“Lion” used for the animal is literal. When “lion” describes a brave man, the relation to the assigned animal sense becomes different, even if a theory explains it by claiming that the man belongs figuratively to the class of lions.

15. The restriction “without interpretive adjustment”

من غير تأويل في الوضع
Without interpretive adjustment to the assigned sense.

This condition becomes important when the speaker appears to keep an expression within its known semantic category but claims figuratively that another object belongs to that category. A brave man called a “lion” is not literally a lion; the point is to convey his courage through the animal’s force.

If a theory handles this by imagined inclusion within the class “lion”, “use in the assigned meaning” alone might fail to exclude it from literal usage. The added restriction signals that a literal use does not depend on that figurative claim.

16. A challenge to the restriction on interpretation

An objection arises: if assignment refers only to a word’s actual established sense, metaphor is already outside literal use, so why add an exclusion of interpretation? Conversely, if assignment can extend through imagined claims, what keeps literal and metaphorical uses distinct?

The issue turns on what assignment is taken to mean. Under one conception it is the conventional relation to an actual meaning; under another, an imaginative claim extends the apparent class of reference. Using both senses interchangeably obscures the dispute.

In calling a courageous man a lion, the animal, the man, and their shared courage must be kept separate. This shows exactly where interpretive adjustment enters.

17. Lexical transfer and figurative attribution

Lexical figurative use asks whether a word is employed outside the meaning conventionally assigned to it. Intellectual or predicative figurative use asks whether an action or quality is attributed to a subject that is not its actual bearer.

Calling a brave man a “lion” raises a question about the noun’s reference. Attributing an event to a grammatically stated but not actually responsible agent raises a question about predication. The two can interact, but they are not the same analytical issue.

Implicit metaphor is difficult precisely because one theory emphasizes shifted lexical designation, while another emphasizes imagined attribution. An accurate reading needs to distinguish them.

18. Al-Sakkākī’s definition of figurative use

بالكلمة المستعملة في غير ما هي موضوعة له بالتحقيق
A word used for something other than what it was actually assigned to denote.

The qualification “in actuality” (bi-l-taḥqīq) matters. A speaker may figuratively claim that a person belongs within the category named by a word, yet that person remains outside its actual assigned referent. The definition preserves a distinction between figurative claim and actual assignment.

A courageous man may resemble a lion but is not a biological lion. The claimed identification supplies rhetorical force, while actual reference identifies the use as nonliteral.

19. Why “actually” was added—and the objection

If figurative use were defined only as “using a word outside its assigned meaning,” an assertive metaphor theory might reply that the courageous man has been imaginatively included among lions. The qualifier “actually” signals the established sense, not the claimed enlargement.

A further objection concerns compatibility: does “without interpretive adjustment” in the literal definition sit coherently beside “in actuality” in the figurative definition? If the criteria are shifted inconsistently, one expression might be counted under incompatible categories.

A defensible distinction must keep original reference separate from imaginatively extended reference rather than using assignment in two unnoticed senses.

20. The type to which an expression’s literal sense belongs

بالنسبة إلى نوع حقيقتها
In relation to the kind of literal meaning that belongs to the word.

A word may be considered within different conventional domains: linguistic, legal-religious, or customary. Judging whether a use falls outside its assigned meaning requires identifying the relevant domain; a change relative to one domain need not be a change relative to every domain.

The restriction “kind of literal sense” therefore specifies the benchmark for the judgment. Confusing a word’s etymological meaning with its established technical or customary meaning can distort the classification of a particular use.

21. The relevant contrast in literal and figurative use

“Other than” does not mean “different from every imaginable sense.” It means different from the assigned sense relevant to the discourse. Where ordinary linguistic meaning and an established technical meaning differ, context identifies which convention is operative.

The issue is not simply what meanings a dictionary lists historically, but which assignment governs this conversation. Without that determination, a conventional technical usage may be wrongly labeled figurative.

This guards against arbitrary classification, but the conversational context must not be stretched so far that every speaker’s intended meaning becomes a new convention. That would erase the stable distinction between literal and figurative use.

22. The expression “in the convention of the discourse”

في اصطلاح به التخاطب
Within the convention according to which the conversation is conducted.

A term can acquire an established technical meaning within a discipline or community. Ignoring that convention and relying only on an older general sense may misclassify an ordinary technical usage as figurative. Discourse convention therefore concerns the recognized linguistic assignment in operation.

A separate condition remains important: a figurative use normally has a contextual clue preventing the literal interpretation. Identifying the governing convention and identifying the prohibiting clue are different functions: the first defines the benchmark; the second determines how a particular utterance departs from it.

23. A prohibiting clue is not a new lexical convention

In “I saw a lion delivering a sermon,” the verb “delivering a sermon” points contextually toward a person, not an actual lion. The clue blocks the ordinary animal reading; it does not create a stable dictionary sense of “lion” meaning “any human orator.”

A contextual clue determines the intended sense of this utterance. Assignment concerns the relatively stable connection between expression and conventional meaning. Treating them as identical would turn each new metaphor into a newly established lexical definition.

Thus the domain of discourse and the prohibiting clue must be kept separate, particularly in theories where imaginative inclusion makes a metaphor appear close to literal reference.

24. Absolute assignment versus interpreted assignment

One difficulty in al-Sakkākī’s wording is whether assignment means only established literal designation or sometimes an interpreted extension created by rhetorical claim. If both are left open, additional restrictions appear necessary.

One response is to understand an unqualified reference to assignment as the actual convention determined by the relevant discourse. Restrictions such as “interpretation” and “actually” can then address a particular metaphor theory that imagines the target within the source’s class.

Still, a well-formed definition should use its central terms consistently. Otherwise the objection and response may merely alternate between different meanings of the word “assignment.”

25. Testing the two definitions against one case

Literal: “Lion” applied to the actual animal follows the governing lexical assignment and involves no imaginative inclusion.
Figurative: “Lion” applied to a brave man is metaphorical when resemblance and context rule out an actual animal.

The same case tests “without interpretive adjustment” in the definition of literal use and “actually” in the definition of figurative use. Under the rhetorical claim, the man is treated as a lion; in actuality he is outside the animal’s biological class.

The test shows that rhetorical intensification does not transform the actual taxonomic relation. The two must remain distinct even where the expression is very forceful.

26. A sound method for evaluating definitional restrictions

Three questions help test every restrictive phrase in a definition:
1. Purpose: which invalid case is the phrase meant to exclude?
2. Necessity: was that case already excluded by other terms?
3. Consequence: does the phrase accidentally exclude a valid case?

The dispute about “without interpretation,” “in actuality,” and “under the discourse convention” is intelligible through these tests. Adding more conditions does not automatically improve a definition; each must have a clear role and fit the others coherently.

Analyzing “I saw a lion giving a sermon” by separating assigned sense, intended referent, contextual clue, and rhetorical claim makes their respective functions apparent.

27. Comparison of the three central issues

IssuePrimary focusKey distinction
Implicit metaphorRecovering an unstated sourceMovement from attribute to image
Imaginative metaphorAttributing a source property to a targetMental image versus external actuality
Literal/figurative usageAssigned versus employed meaningAssignment, interpretation, and clue

The first two entries reflect an approach distinguishing the unstated source from the attribution of its attribute. Other schools may locate the metaphor differently. The point is to preserve analytical distinctions, not to claim that every school uses the same labels.

28. Worked analysis of two metaphorical expressions

أظفار المنية
The claws of death.

The target is death; the predator is not named; claws point toward it. Context and the impossibility of literal claws on death prevent a physical reading.

رأيت أسداً يخطب
I saw a lion delivering a sermon.

Here “lion” is expressly stated and “delivering a sermon” signals a human speaker. In the first example, an attribute reveals an unstated source; in the second, an overt noun moves beyond its actual referent. Though both can suggest power or courage, their structures differ.

29. Conclusion: keep three levels of analysis distinct

The disagreement about implicit and imaginative metaphor is substantive, not merely terminological. One account stresses concealed comparison and attribution of a distinctive attribute; another examines assignment and figurative employment of a word. The al-Kashshāf account of evoking an image through associated features helps make the contrast concrete.

Al-Sakkākī’s restrictions involving assignment, interpretation, actuality, and discourse convention matter because a rhetorical claim does not automatically change an established lexical assignment.

A sound analysis therefore determines the words’ assigned senses, next the imagined scene and predication, and finally the clue and communicative purpose. Only then should a particular school’s classification be assigned.