PHRASEOLOGICAL UNIT, PROVERB AND SAYING AFFINITI AND DISTINCTION Summary The basie stock of phraseological units (idioms) has figurative meanings. The idiom meaning is formed as the result of primary nominative semantic transfer of free wordcombination (phraseological unit prototype), i. e. of primary denotatum on a object (secondary denotatum). Such combined idiomatic vision of two pictures, its figurativeness remains due to its prototype, which is present in the meaning. The same phenomenon is observed in proverbs, where direct and transferred meanings stand out simultaneously (Belarusian proverb: I ў старой печы агонь гарыць. — There is fire even in an old stove). In contrast to proverbs idioms fulfil nominative function in a language and always play the role of a sentence part, while the proverb is a complete utterance. The saying has some more distinctive features in comparison with the idiom. Saying in contrast to idioms and proverbs hasn't got binomial character. Its structure may include an idiom as part of the sentence, while idioms are not used in the proverbs. The proverb may include wordcombination in its own structure as a potential prototype of idiom. It means that the proverb is a genetic source of idioms, and predicative phraseological units are among them