Qaṣr: A tiny word, a big meaning, and an apology
📅 Mon 2 February 2026 at 17:17 GMT
It was a rhetorical accident waiting to happen…
Imagine a tiny word like Qaṣr.
In a huge, ancient textbook of rhetoric.
Written in a strange language – Arabic.
And a looming deadline.
You can see how the Swiss cheese holes line up. Right?
Back in 2022 when I was collecting Arabic rhetorical devices for my Master’s dissertation, I remember skipping over Qaṣr. It means “Restriction”, and refers to when a restrictive construction – such as the word “except” in the sentence “I have no friend except my brother” – is used for rhetorical effect.
Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember deciding that it was very similar to a different rhetorical device I had already found – “Affirmation by Negation” – so I left it out. Well, that’s my excuse anyway! An easy mistake to make. (We’ll ignore the fact that there’s 10+ pages dedicated to Qaṣr… can’t be all that important!)
So what changed?
Well, lately when analysing Arabic texts, I did come across real life examples of Qaṣr, which I tried very hard to shoehorn into other devices in my taxonomy of rhetorical devices, such as Metaphor or Brevity. But it just didn’t fit.
When I finally re-read the classical sources, I worked out that Affirmation by Negation is about hinting at something by negating its opposite – like saying “London is not a small city!” when you intend to mean that London is a big city.
But Qaṣr is more rhetorically clever. It’s when you deny all of something, but then contrast that denial with an exception to the rule. Like saying that you have literally no friends. “Oh, except my brother – my one and only friend.”
Ultimately, my conscience got the better of me.
And I brought Qaṣr in from the cold… I gave Qaṣr it’s rightful and deserved place in the Encyclopedia of Arabic Rhetoric, in the prestigious neighbourhood of ‘ilm al-ma‘ānī too.
Is that enough of an apology, Oh Qaṣr?
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