  Finally, we have the individual by supposition (ex suppositione) or by circumlocution (circumlocutione), represented by the phrase ‘son of Sophroniscus’ . Some people distinguished two cases here. For John Versor, a fifteenth-century thinker, ‘son of Sophroniscus’ is determinate by virtue of supposition, but ‘man with a fat head, a long nose and so on’ is determinate by virtue of circumlocution. In works which did not comment on Porphyry directly, the third type was often omitted, and there was agreement that although the phrases involved are referring expressions and may in fact refer to just one thing, they are not properly speaking singular terms. Just as some common terms, such as ‘sun’ and ‘moon’, in fact have only one referent, so there are referring phrases which in fact have only one referent, but do not count as singular terms because by the mode of their signification they could supposit for more than one thing. 