# المعنى المغزوي



## elroy

Hello!

In a private message I was just writing in Palestinian Arabic, I was explaining the meaning of an expression.  In comparing the literal meaning to what the expression actually means, I found myself using المعنى المغزوي for the latter, as an ad-hoc creation.  I'm not aware of an actual established term for this in Arabic -- or English -- and my formulation made me pause ever so briefly, but I didn't bother researching this because it was just a casual private message, I thought/hoped the meaning would probably be understood, and I wanted my language use to be natural and off-the-cuff.

What do you all think of المعنى المغزوي?  Would you understand it?  Do you think it works (in your dialect and/or MSA)?  Do you have any other/better suggestions?  Do you know or can you suggest an English term for this?

Thanks!


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## Sun-Shine

Do you mean المغزى ?


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## elroy

LOL I guess I _could_ just say المغزى, couldn't I?


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## Sun-Shine

elroy said:


> LOL I guess I _could_ just say المغزى, couldn't I?


Yes

Could it be" the moral "/ " the point"  in English?


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## elroy

sun_shine 331995 said:


> Could it be" the moral "/ " the point" in English?


 Unfortunately not.   I thought of "pragmatic meaning," but that might be too opaque for non-linguists.


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## Sun-Shine

I always see it "moral" , it means المغزى

Could we just say "the meaning is..." or "the purpose"


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## elroy

In this context, neither "moral" nor "purpose" works.

The problem with "meaning" is that I'm trying to distinguish between "the literal meaning" and "the [word I'm looking for] meaning." 

قصدي المعنى الحرفي والمعني اللي هو المغزى، بس بدنا صفة للمعنى بالإنجليزي


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## Sun-Shine

significance? purport? concept?
"the literal meaning" and "the real meaning"

Sorry if I couldn't help.


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## Mahaodeh

elroy said:


> The problem with "meaning" is that I'm trying to distinguish between "the literal meaning" and "the [word I'm looking for] meaning."


I'm assuming you don't mean 'metaphorical' or 'figurative', otherwise you would have just used these, you would have also simply translated them to مجاز أو كناية rather than مغزى which refers to the intended meaning rather than the literal one but not necessarily a metaphor.

I'm not very sure what exactly you mean, maybe an example would help.

By the way, would '_intended meaning_' work?


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## elroy

Sure, the expression was فش عليه غبار.

The *literal* meaning is "There's no dust on it."
The ????? meaning is "It's perfect."

"Intended meaning" is not bad, but I have reservations about it because it refers to the intentions of the speaker, whereas I'm referring to what the expression means in general, regardless of what a specific speaker might mean.


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## Sun-Shine

elroy said:


> The expression was فش عليه غبار.
> 
> The *literal* meaning is "There's no dust on it."
> The ????? meaning is "It's perfect."



The hidden meaning behind it??


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## elroy

It's not hidden, though.


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## Mahaodeh

elroy said:


> Sure, the expression was فش عليه غبار.


I think this specific expression is a metaphor, and in Arabic it would be a مجاز.


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## Sun-Shine

elroy said:


> It's not hidden, though.


Then delete hidden and say "the meaning behind it" is it strange?


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## Sun-Shine

Mahaodeh said:


> I think this specific expression is a metaphor, and in Arabic it would be a مجاز.


أعتقد كناية وليس مجاز


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## elroy

sun_shine 331995 said:


> significance? purport? concept?
> "the literal meaning" and "the real meaning"


 Oops, I missed this post.

The only one of your suggestions that _might_ potentially work is "the real meaning."  But I don't know; that sounds so ... informal. 


> Sorry if I couldn't help.


ولو؟ جهودك مشكورة! احنا كلنا عم منحاول نحل هاللغز مع بعض، ولولا إنه صعب كان ما اضطريتش أسأل!

بعدين صرتي مساعتديني بالمصطلح العربي. 


sun_shine 331995 said:


> "the meaning behind it" is it strange?


 It's not strange, but it's too deep for this context. 

You could use "the meaning behind it" if you were analyzing a poem, for example.


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## Mahaodeh

sun_shine 331995 said:


> أعتقد كناية وليس مجاز


أعتقد، والله أعلم، أن الأصل الكناية والاستخدام مجاز مرسل، أو أنه كلاهما في نفس الوقت
الأصل هو "إنه نظيف" وهذه كناية لأننا نكني النزاهة بالنظافة. ولكن حين نقول "لا غبار عليه" فهذا مجاز مرسل حيث أن العلاقة هي أن عدم وجود الغبار عليه جزء من النظافة أو إحدى شروط النظافة فالعلاقة هي أننا نقصد الكل بالجزء

In all cases, I'm not 100% sure (maybe 90%), I just know that it's part of البلاغة and that it has a name that is not مغزى, although the latter is useful in casual conversations because it gives a generic meaning that can include both in addition to استعارة وتشبيه and others (including 'the meaning behind it' ).


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## Sun-Shine

Mahaodeh said:


> أعتقد، والله أعلم، أن الأصل الكناية والاستخدام مجاز مرسل، أو أنه كلاهما في نفس الوقت
> الأصل هو "إنه نظيف" وهذه كناية لأننا نكني النزاهة بالنظافة. ولكن حين نقول "لا غبار عليه" فهذا مجاز مرسل حيث أن العلاقة هي أن عدم وجود الغبار عليه جزء من النظافة أو إحدى شروط النظافة فالعلاقة هي أننا نقصد الكل بالجزء


ربما هو كذلك



Mahaodeh said:


> (including 'the meaning behind it' ).


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## Sun-Shine

What about "subtext" ??


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## ayed

_significant meaning_


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## DialectLearner

How about "implicit meaning", "underlying meaning", "paraphrased meaning" and "المعنى المقصود"?
أو، استنادا إلى ما تم ذكره سالفا، "المعنى المجازي".


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## djara

In language studies a distinction is made between *denotation* and *connotation*. Here's a definition: "Connotation and Denotation are two principal methods of describing the meanings of words. Connotation refers to the wide array of positive and negative associations that most words naturally carry with them, whereas denotation is the precise, literal definition of a word that might be found in a dictionary." Source


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## elroy

This really is a tough one, isn't it?! 


sun_shine 331995 said:


> What about "subtext" ??





ayed said:


> _significant meaning_


 Unfortunately, neither of these work.


DialectLearner said:


> How about "implicit meaning", "underlying meaning", "paraphrased meaning" and "المعنى المقصود"?
> أو، استنادا إلى ما تم ذكره سالفا، "المعنى المجازي".


 I have similar issues with "implicit meaning" and "underlying meaning" as with "hidden meaning."  The meaning here is clear and obvious; it's just not the _literal_ meaning.  "Paraphrased meaning" doesn't work because we're not paraphrasing anything.

المعنى المقصود is the same as "intended meaning."  Not bad, but not ideal, since again, the focus here is not on what a specific speaker intended.  المعنى المجازي is "metaphorical meaning" so it doesn't fit. 


djara said:


> In language studies a distinction is made between *denotation* and *connotation*. Here's a definition: "Connotation and Denotation are two principal methods of describing the meanings of words. Connotation refers to the wide array of positive and negative associations that most words naturally carry with them, whereas denotation is the precise, literal definition of a word that might be found in a dictionary." Source


 This is different.

An example:

"Skinny," "scrawny," and "slender" have (more or less) the same _denotative_ meaning.  However, "scrawny" has a _negative _connotation, "slender" has a _positive_ connotation, and "skinny" can have a positive or negative connotation.


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## Mahaodeh

elroy said:


> المعنى المقصود is the same as "intended meaning." Not bad, but not ideal, since again, the focus here is not on what a specific speaker intended. المعنى المجازي is "metaphorical meaning" so it doesn't fit.


But it _is_ metaphorical! 

You don't really mean that whatever you are describing has no dust on it, do you? You don't even mean that it's clean (at least not physically), what you mean is that it's incorrupt or even _'honest'_ if you will - you are trying to say that _there is nothing wrong with it/nothing corrupt or dishonest about it_; that's pretty much a *metaphor*, isn't it?

You can also call it a _*figure of speech*_ as metaphors are figures of speech, I would also go as much as to say that it's an _*idiom*_ since it has been established in Arabic for quite a long time and the metaphorical meaning of it is what is understood when it's said not the literal one (i.e., no one actually understands that 'there is no dust on it' regardless of whether what we are talking about can or can not accumulate dust).

Is it that you find that there is something wrong with the established expressions or is it that you don't believe that the phrase فش عليه غبار is a metaphor?


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## DialectLearner

المعنى الفعلي؟


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## Sun-Shine

opposite of "literal translation"

@elroy , do you remember this? 
It may help.


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## elroy

Thanks for sharing that thread, sunshine!  "Idiomatic meaning" might work!  This article, for example, differentiates between "literal meaning" and "idiomatic meaning."

Maha, here's another example that might help you see why I don't think "metaphorical meaning" works.  In Palestinian Arabic, as you know, السنة can mean "this year" and العام means "last year."  The _literal_ meaning of both is "the year," but the ????? meanings are different.  These aren't metaphorical, though; there are no metaphors involved.  It's just that the ????? meaning is not the same as the literal meaning.

I'm not sure if we can use "idiomatic meaning" to refer to individual words, as in the example above. 


DialectLearner said:


> المعنى الفعلي؟


 Not bad! 


sun_shine 331995 said:


> do you remember this?


 No, I had completely forgotten about it!


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## momai

Some suggestions:
المعنى الملفوظ والمراد
المعنى المنطوق والمتبادَر
المعنى الأصلى والافادي


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## ayed

The gist


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## Mahaodeh

elroy said:


> Maha, here's another example that might help you see why I don't think "metaphorical meaning" works. In Palestinian Arabic, as you know, السنة can mean "this year" and العام means "last year." The _literal_ meaning of both is "the year," but the ????? meanings are different. These aren't metaphorical, though; there are no metaphors involved. It's just that the ????? meaning is not the same as the literal meaning.


I feel this one is different, in fus7a you say هذه السنة والسنة الماضية وهذا العام والعام الماضي, but in dialects (at least those that I know of) they seem to have evolved to have their own meanings. I'm not sure that it's not 'literal'.



elroy said:


> I'm not sure if we can use "idiomatic meaning" to refer to individual words, as in the example above.


I don't know either. The problem is that while as little as two words can have an idiomatic meaning, some can argue that if it's one word then the word has acquired a new meaning, as I mentioned above.


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## elroy

Mahaodeh said:


> I'm not sure that it's not 'literal'.


 How can you argue that "this year" for السنة is in any way _literal_?   To me, it is so obviously _not_ literal that I'm curious to hear your arguments to the contrary.

I suppose one could make the (very tenuous) argument that اليوم = "today" = "*this* day," so why can't السنة = "*this* year" by analogy?  The issue with that is that "this day" is not the literal meaning of اليوم to begin with (the literal meaning is "*the* day").  And in any event, that argument can't be made for العام = "*last* year."

Also, there are many other examples of non-literal meanings that are not metaphorical.  What about false friends?  In Palestinian Arabic كاتالوغ is used to mean "user's manual."  The literal meaning is obviously "catalogue."  "User's manual" is not metaphorical; it's just that the English word was borrowed and assigned a new meaning in Arabic.


Mahaodeh said:


> some can argue that if it's one word then the word has acquired a new meaning


 I think that's easy to rebut.  Words can acquire new meanings without losing their old ones.  In such cases, I think people will often consider the original meaning to be the literal one, while the other one wouldn't be considered literal.

For example:

كف in Palestinian Arabic can mean "stop sign," as in وقّفت ع الكف.  I think it would be a stretch, to say the least, to consider "stop sign" for كف _literal_.  The literal meaning is "palm (of the hand)," while "stop sign" is what I might call a _contextual_ meaning.

By the way, I thought of "contextual meaning" as a possible English term for what I'm thinking of, but I was hesitant because I wasn't sure it would work for things like proverbs that are pretty much always used with their non-literal meanings, regardless of context.  Now that I think about it, though, "contextual meaning" might actually work (at least in most cases), because after all, there _is _always a context and most of the time it's possible to think of a context in which the literal meaning _would_ apply.

فش غبار عليه is an interesting borderline case because "there's no dust on it" is _literally_ فش غبرة عليه in Palestinian Arabic, so one could make the argument that because the expression uses غبار and not غبرة, it's always non-literal.  But it still feels weird to say that "it's perfect" is a _literal_ translation of فش غبار عليه because, well, it's clearly not!


momai said:


> المعنى المنطوق والمتبادَر
> المعنى الأصلى والافادي


 شو يعني المتبادَر بالزبط؟

I quite like الإفادي!  ( .بس تناش همزة القطع تعمل معروف) Because we can say المعنى الحرفي هو أنه لا يوجد غبار عليه ولكن التعبير يفيد معنى الكمال.


ayed said:


> The gist


 This means "the general/basic/essential idea," but not necessarily the full meaning.  For example, "I didn't quite understand everything you said, but I got the gist."


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## momai

elroy said:


> شو يعني المتبادَر بالزبط؟


أنا طبعاً عنيت المتبادِر بالكسرة,حقك عالنعس بالليل, الإنسان هو من يُتبادر إليه وبالتالي فهو المتبادَر إليه
القصد هو أن سماع الجملة يليه *تبادر* فوري لما هو مراد به إلى الذهن دون تفكير أو تحليل


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## elroy

Ah, something like the "intuitive meaning" in English.


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