ABSTRACT: The article offers an assessment of the empirical work connected with the study of anomaly in novel metaphor. The authors argue that the results obtained from reaction time experiments do not present convincing evidence against any version of anomaly, as it is argued by meny theorists (e.g. Gibbs and Gerring 1989). They claim that contextual abnormality (considered a sub-positional version of anomaly) cannot be rejected as it is one of the necessary identifiction conditions of novel metphor.