Keyword: «semantic shift»

Based on the material of the Anglo-Saxon heroic epic Beowulf, the images of the ancient peoples inhabiting the North of Europe in ancient times, their attitude to the natural elements are studied. The semantic inconsistency of the metaphor is revealed. To be more exact, the replacing one descriptive meaning with another one, the transition of the subject meaning to the category of feature (semantic shift), the sign of an auxiliary subject, located in the environment of feature words, are investigated.