Metaphorical nomination as the semantic universal unit of anatomical terminological field

Every living language is not static, but a dynamic system. According to W. Humboldt, a language is ?ν?ργεια. That is why polysemy, synonymy and antonymy, homonymy, metaphorization are not only the phenomena for the language, but also the constantly occurring processes. We are interested in lexical and semantic features of metaphorical nomination which exist in modern scientific veterinary anatomists daily use. Metaphorical nomination of veterinary and medical terms is based on the cognitive interpretation. Modern linguistics allows to look at the metaphor from a new angle, that is seen as a verbalized way of perception and understanding of the world, as a universal cognitive mechanism. The article is attempted to explain the mechanism of metaphor formation that represents the logical links between the terms definitions which remain neglected in the process of the study of terminological units of professional speech, as well as when considering an individual anatomical term field. The comprised catalogue of anatomical names of veterinary and medical terms has a factographic goal ? to systematize the existing nomenclature units. This is some kind of data base for the semantic reconstruction of terms derivation, because the vocabulary is a psychological and cultural indicator of the people culture. The change of meanings, the loss of obsolete words, the formation or the borrowing of the new ones ? it all depends on the cultural history of the people. The basic onomasiological features compiling metaphorical nomination of modern veterinary and medical terms have been defined. An attempt to determine the taxonomic depth of metaphor formation has been made, which is the presenter of logical links between the terms definitions remaining out of sight in the process of studying the terminological units of professional speech, and when considering the anatomical terminological field. The most frequent sources of metaphorical nomination in professional language of veterinarians-anatomists have been established.