Conceptual representation is both linguistic and embodied, at least when processing literal language. Here, we aim to demonstrate that metaphor processing is no exception. We investigated how the linguistic component (i.e., linguistic distributional frequency: the co-occurrence frequency of the constituent words in a metaphor) and the embodied component (i.e., how easy it is to simulate the concept: operationalized in a previous norming study) aect metaphor comprehension. Results show that ease of simulation contributes to metaphor processing in both shallow sensibility judgement and deep interpretation generation tasks, but has a larger eect on response times in deeper processing. Linguistic distributional frequency also contributes to metaphor processing in both tasks, but aects the speed of response only in shallow sensibility judgement. Specifically, distributional frequency acts as a linguistic shortcut, both to speed up responses to accept metaphors as sensible when the frequency is high, and to flag up potentially unsuccessful processing when it is low. Overall, these results support embodied views that emphasize the importance of both linguistic and embodied components according to task goals.