This text provides an account of metonymic research. The contributions have different disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds in linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology and literary studies. However, they share the assumption that metonymy is a cognitive phenomenon, a "figure of thought", underlying much of our ordinary conceptualization that may be even more fundamental than metaphor. The use of metonymy in language is a reflection of this conceptual status. The framework within which metonymy is understood in this volume is that of scenes, frames, scenarios, domains or idealized cognitive models.