Moreover, we find that one of those who say this takes expressions that, to his knowledge, have only been used with qualifications, strips them of every qualification, and then claims that this is their literal meaning, without knowing that they have ever been uttered or assigned a meaning in this unqualified form. For example, he may say that the literal meaning of ‘ayn is the organ of sight, and that the term was subsequently applied to the sun’s disc, a flowing spring, and gold because of resemblance.

Most of them, however, say that this is a case of homonymy, not of literal and figurative usage. Such a person therefore offers another example, such as the word “head.” They say that it is literal when referring to a human head, whereas “the head of the road,” meaning its beginning; “the head of the spring,” meaning its source; “the head of the people,” meaning their chief; “the head of the matter,” meaning its beginning; “the head of the month”; “the head of the year”; and similar expressions are figurative usages.

Yet they never find the word “head” used without qualification. Rather, they find it used with qualifications to refer to a human head, as in the words of the Most High:

“and wipe your heads and wash your feet up to the ankles”

and similar passages. This qualification prevents those other meanings from being included.

When one says “the head of the spring,” “the head of the road,” “the head of the people,” or “the head of the matter,” the qualifying expression here differs from the qualifying expression that indicates the meaning there. The complete expression conveying the meaning here differs from the complete expression conveying the meaning there. They merely share part of their wording, just as all definite nouns share the lām of the definite article.

Even if we suppose that a speaker of the language first uttered the expression “a human head”—because a person conceives of his own head before that of anything else, and what is first expressed is what is first conceived—using this noun first in that possessive construction does not prevent its subsequently being used in a possessive construction with something else. Nor would this be figurative usage, just as with other possessive constructions. Thus, if “the son of Adam” was said first, it would not render our saying “the son of