LessonsImplicit and Imaginative Metaphor: Competing Accounts and al-Sakkaki’s DefinitionsQuiz

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.

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Al-Sakkākī’s definition of figurative use

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

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.