مَا زَيْدٌ إِلَّا كَاتِبٌ
Zayd is nothing but a writer.
A writer is also human and possesses many other properties. If “Zayd is only a writer” literally denied every attribute except writing, it would normally contradict reality.
Such a statement is therefore ordinarily relative to a salient contrasting property—perhaps being a poet or scholar—or is interpreted as rhetorical overstatement. The source explicitly notes the difficulty of treating subject-to-attribute qasr as unrestricted reality.
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Qasr: Definitions, Real and Relative Restriction, and Ifrād, Qalb and Taʿyīn
مَا زَيْدٌ إِلَّا كَاتِبٌ
Zayd is nothing but a writer.
A writer is also human and possesses many other properties. If “Zayd is only a writer” literally denied every attribute except writing, it would normally contradict reality.
Such a statement is therefore ordinarily relative to a salient contrasting property—perhaps being a poet or scholar—or is interpreted as rhetorical overstatement. The source explicitly notes the difficulty of treating subject-to-attribute qasr as unrestricted reality.