Discover the meaning of the term Al-tʿqyd (تعقيد) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 3 min readThat the utterance not be an evident indication of the intended meaning, due to a defect.
The fact that the discourse is closed (obscure), so that its meaning does not appear easily.
Either a masdar formed on the pattern of the fa'il (agent), whose meaning is that the speaker produces a discourse whose indication of the meaning is not manifest, owing to a defect occurring in the arrangement (nazm) or in the transition (intiqal); or a masdar formed on the pattern of the maf'ul (patient), whose meaning is that the discourse adduced is not an evident indication of it because of that defect: the former is an attribute of the speaker and the latter an attribute of the discourse. The defect in the arrangement is that the order of the words not conform to the order of the meanings, through advancement, postponement, omission (hadhf), ellipsis (idmar), or the like, which leads to difficulty in understanding what is meant. The defect in the transition of the mind from the first meaning, understood according to the language, to the second intended meaning, is due to the adduction of remote implications (lawazim) needing many intermediaries, together with the concealment of the clues (qara'in) pointing to the purpose. I do not prolong the discussion with examples. You should peruse al-Mutawwal and al-Atwal for the clarification of this discussion.
That the discourse not be an evident indication of what is meant, due to a defect.
That the utterance not be an evident indication of the intended meaning, either by a defect in the arrangement, in that the order of the words not conform to the order of the meanings, through advancement, postponement, or omission; or by a defect in the transition, in that it not be an evident indication of what is meant owing to a defect occurring in the mind's passing from the first meaning, understood according to the language, to the second, intended one, because of the adduction of remote implications requiring many intermediaries, with the concealment of the clues pointing to the purpose (At-Ta'rifat, p. 64).