The article clarifies the concepts of "phraseological unit" - “idiom”, "proverb" and "saying". The composition of proverbs is analyzed from the point of view of the possibility of including phraseological units (idioms) in it, and a conclusion is made that the composition of proverbs contains only genetic prototypes of phraseological units, but not the phraseological units themselves with their characteristic lexical and grammatical meaning. This gives reason to cons sider the proverb as one of the genetic sources for the emergence of phraseological units (idioms).
