On a familiar and prima facie plausible view of metaphor, speakers who speak metaphorically say one thing in order to mean another. A variety of theorists have recently challenged this view; they offer criteria for distinguishing what is said from what is merely meant, and argue that these support classifying metaphor within ‘ what is said ’ . I consider four such criteria, and argue that when properly understood, they support the traditional classifi cation instead. I conclude by sketching how we might extract a workable notion of ‘ what is said ’ from ordinary intuitions about saying.