Image family study as an element of systematic study of phrazeology evolution

The article is dedicated to the problems of studying of the Russian phraseological system development. Idiomatic derivational family is the part of the «image family», which includes words in their figurative usage, figurative phrases, proverbs, etc. Image family develops in connection with the meaning of its nuclear word, which, on one side, is the base of idiom formation and, on the other side, is the result of its functioning in the language.