EN
The article is devoted to history of formation and functioning of Russian word grief. Historical dictionaries and Old Russian texts XI-XVII centuries (hagiography) are sources of the materiał. The lexical units ‘state of mind’ were polysemantic in old Russian (3-12 meanings). As a result of the long use of polysemantic words in Old Russian texts there is a lexico-semantic group ‘state of mind’ and modern direct sense of the word grief.