In most accounts of metaphor, similarities play a prominent role. When e.g. Romeo says ‘Juliet is the sun’, he is commonly taken to extend an invitation to the hearer to explore Juliet’s sun-like features; her being warm, bright, sustaining, etc. are thought to be highlighted by the metaphor. A problem about this kind of interpretation is that it is often difficult to find support for its content as well as its form in the actual context of the metaphor. I will put forward a different approach to metaphor according to which the speaker of a metaphorical ‘S is P’ sentence casts the subject as the predicate in her discursive and imaginative play. The function of the metaphor is not to suggest unstated similarities between the subject and the predicate, but essentially to permit the speaker to make further utterances about the subject in terms of the predicate, either in order to represent features and actions of the subject or to make the subject appear in a certain way.