 Sometimes the effort to render a given original in a given medium requires approximation and elaboration of various sorts, so that any rendering of the given original in the given medium will be correct only up to a point and incorrect thereafter (such is approximation) and more complex or longwinded than the thing rendered (such is elaboration). When this is the case we often call our renderings paraphrases of their originals. Sometimes originals and paraphrases are both verbal, and the aim of the paraphrase is to explain or exposit the original: think of a lawyer’s paraphrase of an obscure statute or a preacher’s paraphrase of a cryptic Bible passage. Sometimes neither original nor paraphrase is verbal and the aim is to adapt the original in some sense or other: think of a polyphonic paraphrase by Palestrina of a snatch of medieval plainsong or the paraphrase of an acanthus leaf in the design of a Corinthian capital.