EN
This study started from the observation that the analysis of language facts from a functional perspective can be adequately complemented by the analysis of semantic motivation, as advanced and documented by Dmitrij Dobrovol'skij and Elisabeth Piirainen (2018) (s. the ample use of this approach as a working method in prestigious lexicographic works, such as The Atlas of the Languages of Europe). The object of investigation is the set phrases featuring the lexeme dog, an important figure of the linguistic and cultural mind in Romance languages such as Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, by evaluating the linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts that marked the meanings of these structures. The results highlight, on the one hand, figurative phraseological patterns that cover in the nomination process different fields of knowledge with a universal character, which refer to fundamental aspects of life, and on the other, particularities specific to each investigated collective mind.