The name of laff wa-nashr was the product of an elaboration by the schoolmen of an originally exegetic term; the content of the figure included material extracted from the tradition of profane rhetoric; rejection of the Qur’anic shawāhid by post-scholastic theorists produced a figure which retained its exegetic name but which consisted of one variation of the profane figure, described (by the scholastics) as mufṣṣaal murattab. Interpreted thus, the equivalence laff wa-nashr: versus rapportati is valid. Like the Oriental figure, the European one was, too, a later refinement of a simple syntactical variation: in Classical rhetoric hyperbaton, under which had been originally subsumed both tmesis (separation) and subnexio (gloss). In both traditions badīʿ ornatus emerged triumphant.
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