Six Kinds of Metaphor by Source, Target, and Common Feature

1. The classification: source, target, and shared feature

تقسيم آخر للاستعارة
A further classification of metaphor.

We examine three elements: mustaʿār minhu, the meaning from which the word is borrowed; mustaʿār lahu, the intended target meaning; and the jāmiʿ, the feature relating them.

The question is no longer whether a metaphor is familiar or rare, nor whether its clue is obvious. We classify the two meanings as sensory or intellectual/conceptual, then examine the nature of their common feature. These three tests produce several distinct cases.

2. Sensory and conceptual meanings

A sensory meaning can be apprehended, in its ordinary instance, through the outward senses: an animal's body, water, glass, or the sun. Sensory perception includes more than sight; hearing and touch can also matter.

An intellectual or conceptual meaning is not itself an object of outward sense. Death, sleep, arrogance, publicizing a command, and the relation between successive events can be understood conceptually even when their effects are visible.

The classification concerns the meaning of the source and target—not the written form of their words. Water is sensory; transgression or arrogant excess is conceptual, even when attributed metaphorically to a flood.

3. Four pairings yield six subtypes

The two relata can be paired in four ways:
1. sensory source and sensory target;
2. conceptual source and conceptual target;
3. sensory source and conceptual target;
4. conceptual source and sensory target.

When both terms are sensory, the common feature may itself be sensory or conceptual, and the first configuration subdivides further. In the book's finer accounting, the sensory–sensory branch has three forms, while each of the other three branches has one. This gives six types in all.

The count belongs to the author's specific analysis of the common feature and should not be treated as an unrestricted combinatorial exercise.

4. When can the common feature be sensory?

A sensory common feature is a shared perceptible configuration, such as the visible bodily form of two objects. Such a feature can be sensory when both source and target admit that perceptible structure.

If one term denotes an intellectual meaning, its common property with the other cannot be a directly sensed feature belonging to it as that meaning. Their likeness therefore has to be established conceptually.

Two sensory terms make a sensory feature possible, not compulsory. Their shared connection may instead involve sequence, disclosure, cause, or some other conceptual relation, even while each scene is visible.

5. Sensory to sensory: the calf image

فَأَخْرَجَ لَهُمْ عِجْلًا جَسَدًا لَهُ خُوَارٌ
He brought out for them a calf-shaped body that made a lowing sound.

The expression applies the name ʿijl (calf) to a formed object resembling a calf. The real calf and the fashioned calf-like body are both perceptible. Their common feature is a visible bodily shape.

Source: an actual calf.
Target: a calf-shaped made object.
Common feature: perceivable likeness of form.

The rhetorical classification does not depend on settling every historical issue concerning the episode; it depends on identifying the metaphor's relata and common feature.

6. Why shape is sufficient for sensory resemblance

The actual calf and the made object differ in decisive respects: one is a living animal, the other a fashioned artifact. Yet metaphor does not require total identity across all attributes. A particular salient jāmiʿ can justify the transfer.

The object's calf-like configuration makes the borrowed animal-name intelligible without implying that the object literally belongs to the living species.

Metaphorical identification claims an assimilation in one relevant respect, not a complete equivalence of natural kinds.

7. Sensory source and target, conceptual likeness

وَآيَةٌ لَهُمُ اللَّيْلُ نَسْلَخُ مِنْهُ النَّهَارَ
A sign for them is the night: We strip the day away from it.

The verb naslakhu evokes the sensory action of removing a hide. That action is borrowed to portray daylight's departure and the emergence of darkness. Both the hide-removal scene and the changing light are apprehensible in experience.

The connection, however, is not simply a shared visible outline. It is the ordered disclosure of one state when another is removed. This is a conceptual common feature within a metaphor whose source and target scenes are sensory.

8. The original action behind naslakhu

In ordinary skinning, removing a covering reveals what lay beneath it. The metaphor draws on this perceivable action to make a cosmic transition vivid.

The verse does not claim that night is literally an animal or that daylight is a physical hide. It borrows the action of stripping to represent a large-scale transition in the conditions of light.

Common feature: the intelligible connection between removal and the subsequent emergence of another state.
Contextual clue: the action is predicated of day and night rather than a hide and an animal.

9. The immediate outcome after withdrawal

فَإِذَا هُمْ مُظْلِمُونَ
Then suddenly they are in darkness.

This ending gives prominence to the darkness perceived after the departure of daylight. The abrupt construction conveys the sudden awareness of the resulting condition, strengthening the metaphorical scene.

The removal of daylight and the arrival of darkness are linked by sequence and succession. The metaphor cannot be accounted for solely by comparing the visual color or shape of skin with daylight.

10. The nuanced interpretation of stripping

The figurative scene has two related aspects: removal or uncovering, and the appearance of darkness that follows it. They need not be forced into a false opposition.

The borrowed verb expresses a withdrawing or stripping action; the following clause names its perceived consequence. The action, the intended figurative comparison, and its outcome must be kept analytically distinct.

This distinction matters when discussing alternative explanations: an account of one part of the sequence should not be mistaken for an exhaustive analysis of the entire metaphor.

11. Contrasting sensory and conceptual common features

ExampleTwo termsCommon feature
Calf-shaped bodyBoth sensoryVisible similarity of form: sensory
Day stripped from nightSensory scenesSequence of removal and emergence: conceptual

The claim that any visible metaphor must have a sensory common feature is incorrect. The relevant feature is the one that justifies the figurative transfer, not merely any perceivable attribute of the relata.

Identify the source and target first; then specify precisely the shared relation that makes the borrowing appropriate.

12. A mixed common feature: sensory plus conceptual

رأيتُ شمسًا
I saw a sun.

If the speaker intends a human person and combines the beauty of that person's appearance with the eminence of their station, the common feature is mixed or composite. Beauty of appearance belongs to the sensory aspect, whereas eminence of position is intellectual or evaluative.

The source is the literal sun and the target is the human individual. Both can be indicated as perceptible beings, while their likeness draws on both sensory and conceptual features. This supplies the third subtype within the sensory–sensory pairing.

13. Multiple attributes versus a genuinely mixed feature

Several attributes may be mentioned in one comparison. The special term mixed common feature applies when the actual likeness brings together sensory and conceptual constituents.

Calling someone a sun for radiant appearance may rest on a sensory feature alone. Using the image for high standing may rely on a conceptual feature. Intending both produces the mixed case.

Thus the isolated metaphorical word “sun” does not settle the category. The relevant intended resemblance, as identified from context, determines the classification.

14. Both meanings conceptual: sleep and death

مَنْ بَعَثَنَا مِنْ مَرْقَدِنَا
Who has raised us from our resting place?

The word “marqad” invokes sleep or a place of repose, which is used here in connection with death and the state before resurrection. Sleep and death are not independent, directly perceptible bodies in the way glass or water is.

Source: the state of sleeping or resting.
Target: the state of death.
Common feature: the absence of ordinary conscious activity, grasped conceptually.

The analogy identifies a relevant likeness, not the complete identity of sleep and death.

15. The precise scope of the sleep–death analogy

Sleeping temporarily suspends ordinary waking activity while life continues; death is a different and far more profound condition. The metaphor does not treat their full realities as equivalent.

A specific common feature is sufficient for figurative comparison: the apparent interruption of usual activity provides the conceptual link. “Marqad” evokes repose, while the act of being raised makes the contrast rhetorically sharp.

The effects of either state may be perceptible, such as bodily stillness. Yet the meanings classified in this discussion remain conceptual states rather than sensory objects in themselves.

16. Why two conceptual terms need a conceptual relation

Where both source and target are conceptual meanings, they cannot be linked as such by direct equality of color, size, or sound. We may observe signs associated with sleeping and death, yet the likeness between the meanings is an intelligible relation.

That is why the common feature in this category is conceptual. Selecting an outward effect as the proposed common feature requires justification that it truly belongs to both meanings in the same relevant respect.

The distinction preserves the difference between a perceptible effect and a conceptual meaning. Otherwise every abstract state with visible consequences would be wrongly reclassified as a sensory object.

17. Sensory source, conceptual target: proclamation

فَاصْدَعْ بِمَا تُؤْمَرُ
Proclaim clearly what you are commanded to convey.

Ṣadʿ has a sensory meaning associated with cracking or splitting something solid, such as glass. The image is borrowed for the decisive, open declaration of a commanded message, a conceptual communicative act.

Source: the physical splitting of a solid object.
Target: making the command manifest through proclamation.
Common feature: overcoming concealment or obstruction so that something becomes openly manifest; an intellectual relation.

18. From breaking glass to openly delivering a message

Breaking glass physically disrupts the unity of a solid object. Openly communicating a command does not involve literal shattered glass; what is removed is the condition of concealment.

The metaphor must not be reduced to merely speaking at high volume. It concerns unreserved, manifest, effective proclamation. The energy of a sensory action is transferred to a conceptual act of communication.

The fact that both expressions can appear as verbs does not make their underlying meanings belong to the same class. Their sensory or conceptual status must be considered separately.

19. Proving the conceptual nature of the common feature

Cracking glass and publicly delivering a message need not share any one visible physical form. Their link lies in removing a barrier or state of concealment so that something becomes manifest.

This is a relation of effective disclosure, which is understood intellectually. Hence the source is sensory, the target conceptual, and the common feature conceptual.

A proper analysis states all three components. Merely calling the verse “figurative” or “beautiful” fails to explain the cause of its classification.

20. Conceptual source, sensory target: water in flood

إِنَّا لَمَّا طَغَى الْمَاءُ حَمَلْنَاكُمْ فِي الْجَارِيَةِ
When the water exceeded its bounds, We carried you in the vessel.

Ṭughyān literally evokes excessive transgression or rebellion. The term is used for the water's extraordinary abundance and rise, casting a perceptible flood in the language of transgression.

Source: arrogant transgression or overstepping, a conceptual meaning.
Target: the visible excess of water.
Common feature: exceeding an established limit, understood conceptually.

21. How the flood metaphor works

Water does not deliberately disobey a moral command, so the ordinary human meaning of “transgression” cannot be predicated of water without figurative adjustment. The mention of water helps indicate the nonliteral sense.

The likeness is exceeding a limit, but the nature of excess differs. Human transgression may be intentional and moral; the flood's excess concerns quantity, level, and spread.

This shows that a metaphor may borrow from a conceptual meaning and apply it to a sensory event. “Faṣdaʿ” illustrates the reverse direction, from sensory action to conceptual proclamation.

22. The two mixed directions must not be confused

ExpressionSource meaningTarget meaning
Faṣdaʿ bimā tuʾmarSplitting a solid: sensoryOpen proclamation: conceptual
Ṭaghā al-māʾRebellion: conceptualAbundant water: sensory

In both cases the common feature is conceptual, yet the direction of borrowing is reversed. Identify the established source meaning first, then the intended target meaning.

Calling both merely “mixed sensory and conceptual” captures a broad property but fails to retain the precise distinction required by this classification.

23. Why a mixed source-target pair cannot have a purely sensory link

Borrowing a sensory word for an intellectual meaning, or the reverse, is perfectly possible. But a purely sensory common feature would have to be a perceptible configuration present as such in both meanings; that cannot be established for an abstract relatum.

“Faṣdaʿ” connects physical splitting with proclamation through uncovering, while “ṭaghā al-māʾ” connects rebellion with flood-water through excess beyond a bound. Both connections are intelligible relations.

Here “intellectual” does not mean fictitious or unfounded. It means a common feature grasped through a conceptual relation rather than merely through an outward sense.

24. Complete six-part classification

SourceTargetCommon feature
SensorySensorySensory
SensorySensoryConceptual
SensorySensoryBoth sensory and conceptual
ConceptualConceptualConceptual
SensoryConceptualConceptual
ConceptualSensoryConceptual

Key conclusion: two sensory terms allow three types of shared feature: sensory, conceptual, or mixed. Each of the remaining three pairings requires a conceptual relation. This is the structure behind the six subtypes.

The isolated noun in an example is not enough to determine the answer; the intended target and likeness must first be identified.

25. Avoid conflating the clue with the common feature

The common feature explains the fitness of a word for its new meaning; the clue indicates that its literal meaning is not intended in that context. The concepts are related but analytically different.

In “ṭaghā al-māʾ,” water in the context prevents a literal reading of deliberate rebellion; the common feature is exceeding a bound. In “faṣdaʿ bimā tuʾmar,” the command provides the clue; the common feature is bringing a hidden matter into clear expression.

When asked for the nature of a common feature, the answer must derive from the relation between source and target meanings, not from the clue alone.

26. Metaphor versus unrelated figurative association

Metaphor is based on resemblance between source and target meanings. That resemblance may lie in observable form or in a conceptual relation such as sequence, excess, disclosure, or effect.

In majāz mursal, the figurative transfer rests on a relation other than resemblance, such as causation, containment, or part-for-whole. A conceptual common feature therefore does not automatically transform a metaphor into majāz mursal.

The imagery of stripping in “naslakhu,” and of transgressive excess in “ṭaghā al-māʾ,” remains grounded in a likeness appropriate to metaphor.

27. A reliable method for analysing examples

A sound analysis of a new metaphor follows a definite order:
1. Identify the established source meaning.
2. Identify the intended new target meaning.
3. State the precise common feature.
4. Classify all three as sensory or conceptual.
5. Explain the contextual clue preventing a literal reading.

Worked case: “ṭaghā al-māʾ” moves from rebellion to abundant water, with exceeding a limit as the relation. Without first distinguishing the source and target, one cannot tell the direction of the transfer.

28. Worked classification of all five principal examples

ExampleSource → targetFeature
Calf-shaped bodySensory → sensorySensory form
Day stripped from nightSensory → sensoryConceptual sequence
A sun meaning a person (beauty and eminence)Sensory → sensoryMixed
Our resting placeConceptual → conceptualConceptual
Proclaim what you are commandedSensory → conceptualConceptual
The water transgressedConceptual → sensoryConceptual

The examples fill all six analytical slots. They also show why a conceptual common feature is not a complete category by itself: the direction and nature of both relata remain important.

29. Synthesis and transition to the next division

The central result is that source meaning, target meaning, and common feature are three different analytical roles. Two sensory relata do not force a sensory common feature. Where at least one relatum is conceptual, the common feature must be characterized conceptually.

This lesson classified metaphor through its semantic structure. The next division asks instead about the linguistic form of the borrowed expression—whether it occurs as a noun, verb, derivative, or other grammatical form.

The semantic framework developed here will continue to apply, but the two taxonomic axes should not be collapsed into one.