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.