Humanities & Social Sciences 5 (2015 8) 864-872 ~ ~ ~ УДК 811.111 Etymology of English Proverbs Eugene E. Ivanov and Julia A. Petrushevskaia* Mogilev State A. Kuleshov University 1 Kosmonavtov Str., Mogilev, 212022, Belarus Received 03.11.2014, received in revised form 21.12.2014, accepted 14.02.2015 The article deals with the languages of origin and sources of English proverbs. <...> The aim of this study is to identify and quantify the rankings (based on the proportion of paremiological units) of languages of origin, personal, functional and stylistic and genre affi liation with textual sources of English proverbs. <...> The study determines two main factors that affect the formation of the paremiological fund of the English language: the broad international and intercultural contacts (every third English proverb has foreign origin) and the writing tradition (almost half of the English proverbs goes back to written sources, different in terms of productivity and very diverse in functional and stylistic and genre affi liation). <...> More over It fi nds out that English paremiological fund hasn’t been subjected to signifi cant infl uence of foreign languages in the new period (four out of fi ve borrowed proverbs belong to classical languages and French, the infl uence of which was the most prominent on the English language in the ancient period and fully completed by the end of the middle period). <...> The study also defi nes that the paremiological fund of the modern English possess a high proportion of the nationalcultural component (three out of the four authors of the English proverbs written sources turn out to be British or American). <...> Keywords: the English language, etymology, English paremiological fund, native English proverbs, borrowed proverbs in the English language, literary proverbs. <...> Introduction Origin and sources of English proverbs are very diverse and are determined by the peculiarities of the historical dynamics of the English language, national specifi city of British culture and the results of its contacts with other cultures in the world. <...> According to its origin, English proverbs (as in any other European language) are traditionally divided into native and borrowed (mainly from Latin and French). <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: ivanov-msu@mail.ru # 864 # Holy Scripture, literature (especially the works by William Shakespeare) (Zimovets <...>