The fifth chapter

Regarding the decisive, the ambiguous, metonymy, insinuation, and rational figurative speech

[Definition of the decisive:]

It should be known that the decisive is what the people of the language understand from it only one meaning.

The understanding of the first Arabs, not the understanding of the philosophizing linguists:

And what is considered is the understanding of the first Arabs, not the understanding of the philosophers in our era who split hairs,

for indeed splitting hairs in other than its place is a chronic disease that makes 'the decisive' 'ambiguous' and the known unknown.

Definition of the ambiguous and its aspects.

And the ambiguous is what bore two meanings either for a reason:

- The possibility of the pronoun returning to two referents,

such as a person saying: 'As for the emir ordering me to curse so-and-so, may Allah curse him'

(so it is possible that the pronoun returns to the emir or to so-and-so)

- Or due to the homonymy of the word in two meanings, such as the word "lamastum" which comes in the meaning of intercourse and touching by the hand also.