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Al-Rāzī said: “As for scholarly usage, know that people have offered many explanations of the clear and the ambiguous, and the works of our predecessors discuss both. My view is that an expression assigned to convey a particular meaning either admits another meaning or does not. If it is assigned to convey one meaning and admits no other, it is unequivocal.

“If it admits another meaning, either one of the two meanings is more likely than the other, or neither is more likely and both are equally possible. If one meaning is more likely than the other, the expression is termed ‘apparent’ with respect to the more likely meaning and ‘interpreted’ with respect to the less likely meaning. If both meanings are equally possible, the expression is equivocal with respect to both together, and indeterminate with respect to either one in particular.