| Summary: | The paper explores the least studied and, thus, the most disputable and variable aspect in describing phraseological units, which is semantics.The research is based on the semantic and grammatical analysis of 514 phraseological units with a zoonymic component in the English language collected by means of continuous sampling from the English-Russian phraseological dictionaries by professor A.V. Kunin. By analyzing lexicographical definitions, realization of the units in speech, and, in some cases, etymological aspects, we have managed to develop a hierarchy of semes in the structure of their meaning and make up a classification based on a semantic-grammatical principle. This is an essential part in the long process of compiling a dictionary of phraseological units.
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