  To claim that ‘chimaera’ is the equivalent to ‘blictrix’ implies that ‘chimaera’ is equally meaningless. The view that significant words must name existing things presents obvious and difficult cases because we can utter true or false sentences about things that never existed or that no longer exist. In such cases, William claims that words have a figurative signification. ‘Chimaeras are imaginary’ figuratively expresses the sentence ‘Some mind has the imagination of a chimaera’ (Abelard D 136.32; Kneale and Kneale 1962: 207). ‘Homer is a poet’ is properly understood figuratively as ‘Homer's work, which he wrote in his role as poet, exists’ (H9; Iwakuma 1999: 113; Abelard D 136.14ff, 168.11ff).