The book of the famous Petersburg (Leningrad) philologist Professor V.V. Kolesov consists of articles of different years, which reflect the semantics of language in speech communication as a manifestation of meaningful forms of culture. The word is studied in three-dimensional space - the history of language, the development of style and the formation of culture. The collection presents both the methodological base for the study of lexical systems and texts, and the history of individual words (name - banner - sign, soul and personality, conscience, illness).