He means by his saying, "she said, 'Qāf,'" that she said, "I have stopped (qad waqaftu)." Thus, by uttering the qāf of waqaftu, she indicated her intended complete word, which is waqaftu. So they directed His statement, "Alif Lām Mīm," and the like, toward this kind of meaning. Some of them said: The alif is the alif of anā ("I"), the lām is the lām of Allāh, and the mīm is the mīm of aʿlam ("I know"), each letter among them indicating a complete word. They said: Thus the sum of these disjoined letters, when the complete letters of each word are manifested with every letter among them, is "I, Allah, know" (Anā Allāhu aʿlam). They said: Likewise, all the remaining instances at the beginnings of the surahs of the Qur'an are according to this meaning and this interpretation. They said: It is widespread and apparent in the speech of the Arabs that a speaker among them truncates letters from a word if what remains contains an indication of what was omitted from it—and adds to it what is not part of it if the addition does not obscure its meaning to its listener—such as their truncation in softening (tarkhīm) of the thāʾ from Ḥārith, so they say: Yā Ḥāri, and of the kāf from Mālik, so they say: Yā Māli, and similar examples; and like the statement of their rajaz poet: What is the matter with the male ostrich acting wild? Why does it not yā...? Its skin peels off from it when it yā... (1)

As if he intended to say: "When it does (yafʿal) such and such," so he contented himself with the yāʾ from yafʿal. And as another of them said: With good, good things, and if evil, then fā... Meaning: fa-sharr ("then evil"). And I do not desire evil unless you tā... (2) Meaning: tashāʾ ("unless you wish"). So he contented himself with the tāʾ and the fāʾ in both words, omitting the rest of their letters, and similar textual evidences whose exhaustive presentation would lengthen the book.