Words Gold – Golden (золотой – Златой – Золотистый) in Russian Poetical Colour and Metaphoric Palette

This paper investigates the semantic properties of the Russian adjectives gold and golden and their functioning in the Russian poetry. We claim that their metaphorical meaning has been changed regarding different time laps and different authors (Pushkin, Akhmatova, Akhmadullina, Okudzhava, Vysotsky). The aim of this paper is to offer an analysis of these words usage in the Russian poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries. We stated that the peculiarities of usage of the words under consideration changed within time, the main semantic shifts are connected with the author’s individual style and the general turn to pragmatic society at the end of the 20th century. Thus the analysis of indirect senses of the adjectives reveal differences in Russian linguistic world views of different times.