Chapter 8 discusses in detail the relevance-theoretic approach to metaphor. This includes the conception of metaphor giving rise to a range of weak implicatures for the reader’s exploration, and the idea that metaphor is a case of loose use, related to other kinds of loose use like hyperbole, and involving the construction of an ad hoc concept. The chapter presents the argument that this view of metaphor is more efficient than Gricean and stylistic approaches in a number of ways. This account makes no distinction between the literal and the figurative, needs no staged model of comprehension, no notion of flouting maxims and no apparatus which distinguishes between tenor, ground and vehicle, or between target and source. The chapter represents the enterprise of this book in showing that literary language can be accounted for in the same terms as other communicative uses of language. It also expands on the notion of poetic effects introduced in earlier chapters. Recent developments and debates in relevance theory on metaphor are included here. The arguments are illustrated with attention to single metaphors from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and from ‘The Armadillo’ by Elizabeth Bishop, and the extended metaphor in ‘Winter my Secret’ by Christina Rossetti.