indivisible atoms—a body has magnitude and attributes, and its attributes are not due to those atoms; the same is therefore true of its magnitude. Such questions, and others like them, are subtle rational inquiries that never occurred to the generality of Arabs and non-Arabs who used the word “body.”
Third:
It is well known that a familiar word in a language—one used by both the elite and the common people, who intend its meaning—cannot have a meaning that most people find difficult to conceive, while knowledge of the validity of that meaning (2) depends (1) on subtle rational proofs that are disputed among rational thinkers. For all who use the word agree in intending the meaning that it signifies in the language. (Anything so subtle that most people do not understand it cannot be what its users intend; nor can anything disputed. This is why some scholars of legal theory have said: A familiar word cannot have been coined to signify an obscure meaning known only to a select few, such as the word “motion” and similar terms. It is well known that the word “body” is familiar in the Arabic language)(3), even though most Arabs had no conception of composition, knew nothing of the proof for composition, and many of them denied composition from indivisible atoms or from matter and form. This establishes with certainty that its linguistic meaning is not something disputed among speculative thinkers and knowledge of which depends (4) on rational inquiry and subtle proofs.