This master thesis presents analysis of passive vocabulary, i.e. historicisms and archaisms, found in Lithuanian –Latvian (1964; 1995) and Latvian – Lithuanian (1977; 2003) dictionaries. The mentioned language units are the names of old-fashioned, obsolete things, phenomena, concepts and realia. They are the only mouthpieces of such concepts and that is why we cannot manage without them when speaking about phenomena of the past. Besides, historicisms and archaisms are terms of history, ethnography, archeology and other studies related to the past. A number of this kind of vocabulary can be used in indirect meaning. Passive vocabulary in this thesis is classified and discussed in the aspects of lexis, morphology and topicality. Historicisms and archaisms of the Lithuanian and Latvian languages (formation, grammatical categories, synonymy of passive vocabulary) are compared. The work also analyses how passive vocabulary (systems of labels) is presented in different dictionaries (bilingual, thesauruses) and whether the authors of different lexicographical publications acknowledge the same historicisms and archaisms. The thesis is performed applying the comparative, descriptive – analytical and calculating methods. Lexical and morphological classifications of historicisms and archaisms support the idea that the passive vocabulary found in bilingual Lithuanian – Latvian and Latvian – Lithuanian dictionaries are very diverse and heterogeneous. Historicisms and archaisms noted in... [to full text]