Construction of the meaning of the word "struggle" in English

This article presents a historical and lexicological research devoted to identification of the semantic features of the English word "struggle ". Basing on the diachronic approach to language, the authors consider semantic change of the English word "struggle" within key historical periods. In the paper etymological analysis of the lexical unit "struggle " is conducted, its derivational structure is described, natural changes of the word at phonetic, lexical and semantic levels are revealed. The study focuses on the problem of lexical ambiguity of the language unit "struggle". Polysemy is also detected while conducting analysis of the internal semantic structure of the nominative lexeme "struggle ", exposing significative, structural, emotive and denotative meanings of the word under study.