Contents introduction chapter I historical background of etymological doublets

(‗excellent, exciting‘);

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  idiolects: the vocabulary specific of a certain person; some
  

famous people‘s vocabularies (Raeganisms, Bushisms) have been of particular interest to the linguists.

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  Considering emotional colouring, words can be classified into neutral and emotionally coloured (or loaded) vocabulary: bureaucrat vs public servant, anti-life / pro-abortion vs pro-choice, regime vs government, slowpoked vs leisurely, to go back on one‘s word vs to reconsider, to be indignant vs to make fuss, do-gooder vs idealist.
  
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  With chronological prospective, one can allocate:
  

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  neologisms: blog, punked, adultolescence, to unfriend, to google, prequel, plus-size, consumerization, band-aid, advertorial, awesome-itude, bacheloric, bizarred, e-linquent, edress, to egosurf, halfie, etc.
  
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  archaic words: thee, steed, hereunto, thereof, alack, anon, beseech, ere, gaoler, morrow, verily, wherefore.
  

 By origin words can be classified into:

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  native: father, stone, swear, work, sit, two, above, life, baby, back, believe, blow, break, cat, child, clever, cut, dark, depth, fall, food, foot, give, glass, good, half, job, jump, etc.;
  
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  borrowed: machine, datum, alumnus, bourgeois, rendezvous, babushka, abolish, acquisitive, admire, adolescence, quotidian, raison d'être, recollection, strudel, lager, leitmotif, balustrade, bronze, replica, terra-cotta, sepia, studio, villa and
  
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  international: telephone, president, organization, algebra, automobile, biology, chemistry, dynamite, encyclopedia, hysteria, museum, prince, university, violin, vitamin, etc..
  

Lexical system of language is the least rigid among all language subsystems. The boundaries between word groups are quite flexible. One and the same word can (with different meanings and uses) belong to different word strata.
When vocabulary functions are researched, the following issues are discussed:

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  word usage frequency: frequently used words are distinguished from rare words, frequently used words lists are made (among the most frequently used English words, except pronouns and grammatical words, hot, word, time, say, write, like, long, make, thing, see are mentioned); active vocabulary (the word stock recognized and used by a particular person or a group of people) and passive vocabulary (the word stock recognized by a particular person, but not actively used) are described;
  
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  words in oral speech and in writing: the differences between spoken and written language are studied, as well as the peculiarities of word choice in written and spoken texts (for example, tautology in spontaneous speech), the choice of register (standard English, vernacular, jargon) in oral and written communication is researched, the influence of speech on the languageas-a-system (neologisms, nonce-words, coinages and their assimilation by the system of language) is of particular academic interest;  nominative function of words:
  

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  the correlation between words and aspects of extralinguistic reality is researched;
  
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  cognitive nominative mechanisms are defined:
  
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    analogy: coining new words by means of existing affixes, the
    

cases of folk etymology, when parts of stems are interpreted as affixes by analogy to the existing word-formation model (hamburger – cheeseburger - vegeburger), the cases of lexicalization of affixes or syntactic units (a mini, doit-yourself), the cases of metaphoric nomination (based on a certatin similarity: pencil skirt);

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  opposition: creating antonyms to the already existing lexemes
  

by means of affixes with negative semantics: anti- (fashion – antifashion, aesthetics - antiaesthetics), non- (colour – non-colour), un- (fashionable – unfashionable, cool – uncool, comfortable – uncomfortable); the use of suffixes with opposite meanings (mini-skirt – maxi-skirt; sleaved - sleaveless); the use of lexical antonyms (readymade – handmade);

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  axiological shifts: amelioration and pejoration: elevation and
  

lowering of meaning (queen from Indoeuropean gwene (woman, wife); knave (a cheat) – from Old English cnafa (boy));

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  compression (a push-up from a push-up bra) and detalization
  

of meaning (creating multicomponent word-combinations);

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  assimilation mechanisms that help use borrowed words and
  

nonce-words according to the rules of the English language (sari – saris; a wannabee – wannabees);

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  context shifts of meaning and word usage are studied, the context-dependent aspects of connotation and polysemy; the application spheres of different vocabulary registers; pragmatic aspects of word usage;
  
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  word combinability is studied together with the rules of building word-combinations.
  

Four ways of vocabulary enrichment can be distinguished:

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  Word-formation: affixation, compounding, conversion, etc.;
  
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  Development of new meanings: polysemy, semantic change;
  
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  Creating word-combinations;  Borrowings.