while his wording gives no indication of it; or it is merely an invented usage that presses the expression into service for that new meaning. Such a move is possible only with speech that you yourself coin, not with someone else’s words.
In truth, when a person says, “We carry it to such-and-such,” or, “We interpret it as such-and-such,” he is simply trying to fend off the wording’s indication of the meaning for which it was originally coined. His opponent has adduced the text against him; unable to deny that the text exists, he dodges its meaning and declares, “I carry it to something contrary to its apparent sense.”
If it is objected, “There is another sense of ‘carrying’ that you have not mentioned: once it is impossible for the wording to have been intended literally, and equally impossible to deem it meaningless, we infer—from its very occurrence together with the impossibility of the literal sense—that its figurative sense is intended; we therefore ‘carry’ it to that figurative sense by way of inference, not by arbitrary invention,”
we reply: That is nothing more than a claim about the speaker—that he intended that meaning. As stated earlier, such a claim is either true or false. It is inconceivable that he would mean something contrary to the literal and apparent sense without explaining to the listener what he actually meant; on the contrary, his words will normally be accompanied(1) by something that reinforces the literal sense. We do not deny that a speaker may at times mean something other than the apparent sense when he aims to obscure the matter from the listener, as in maʿārīḍ (evasive allusions) that are permitted or required. But we vehemently reject the notion that he would intend something contrary to the apparent and literal sense when his purpose is clarification, elucidation, and conveying his intent.
Speech, therefore, is of two kinds: one intended to conceal the matter from the listener, and one intended to clarify, guide, and instruct. Uttering a word while intending something other than its literal and apparent sense, without any accompanying clues that disclose(2) the intended meaning, belongs to the first kind, not the second. Allah knows best.