Structural-semantic characteristic of synonymic rows of nouns with the meaning of “criminal” in British and American variants of English slang

The work is devoted to the detailed analysis of the semantic and structural peculiarities of the synonymic rows of nouns with he meaning of «criminal» in British and American variants of English slang. It studies such linguistic notions as synonymy, slang, synonymic row, synonymic row dominant. Based on the study undertaken, the author presents the complex comparative analysis of the semantic peculiarities and word formation models of synonymic slang nouns with the meaning of «criminal». The article makes an attempt to distinguish the national peculiarities of morphological structure and semantic variability in the synonymic rows of nouns belonging to two variants of English slang. It uncovers the content of the concept of synonymy from the point of view of functionality and stylistic orientation. The work touches upon the topic of ways in which lexical synonyms appear in the language, including the slang source.