This book explores whether the cognitive linguistic approach to metaphor can simultaneously account for universality and variation in metaphorical thought, and proposes a new theory regarding metaphor variation. It identifies the social and cultural boundaries that indicate disruptions in human experience as main dimension of metaphor variation; it describes which conceptual metaphor components are involved in metaphor variation, and how; it discusses the main causes of metaphor variation; and it considers the cultural coherence level in the interplay between conceptual metaphors, embodiment, and metaphor variation causes.