The paper examines the theoretical foundations of two of the dominant trends in semantics, namely Chomskyan generative linguistics and cognitive semantics, and brings forward the theoretical and conceptual problems these approaches encounter in explaining semantic and metaphoric creativity. E. Coseriu’s study on “metaphoric creation in language” is suggested to have provided the necessary conceptual and theoretical coordinates for a redefinition of metaphor as creative-cognitive activity. In addition, it is emphasized that although from a functional perspective the study of metaphor in language properly belongs to the designational domain, the metaphoric phenomenon can be captured beyond the universal level of speaking as well, more precisely within all three semantic sub-domains of the activity of speaking distinguished by Coseriu: designational, idiomatic and textual.