In today's world, animals play an important role in people's lives. They become friends of people, a source of joy and happiness for children and adults, a cure for loneliness for the elderly. The way of thinking of peoples is diverse due to national specifics, which is reflected in the diversity of figurative meanings of the vocabulary related to the names of animals [1]. This agenda is what the article is devoted to.Knowledge of the specifics of the associative-figurative meanings of the vocabulary of a certain language seems to be one of the most complex parts of the linguistic knowledge the intercultural competence is based on. The very diverse national associative-semantic specificity is manifested, in particular, in the animal vocabulary. The article deals with the associative-figurative meanings of the vocabulary denoting animals in various languages, in particular Russian and Tajik.The purpose of this research is to study the semantics of lexical units in order to identify emotive connotations in different languages based on the material of the vocabulary denoting animals.Methods of researchThe research methods were:analysis of specialized publications [2-5];study of phraseological units of various languages;matching and comparing lexical units.