In this article I deal with two social encyclical letters – Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931). Also I undertake to discuss the views of Archbishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, who can be regarded as the most important forerunner of the ideas proclaimed later by Pope Leo XIII.

The reconstruction of the semantics of Slavic phraseology is one of the priority tasks of comparative‑historical Slavic studies. Etymological dictionaries should be compiled as the result of such research. This article is dedicated to the origins of the phraseological entity “Jump out as Pylyp from cannabis”. It is known in Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech and Lithuanian. The expression has a long chronological fixation that goes back to the second half of the sixteenth century. Many linguists, folklorists, and historians have studied the sources of this expression. According to an analysis of the subject literature, the etymological versions depended on the interpretation of such components as “Pylyp” and “cannabis”. There is no such complicated story in Slavic phraseology that includes two key components at the same time. This expression is considered to have a Polish origin. The result of our study is the hypothesis that the etymology is related to the Baltic area, namely the Lithuanian language and traditional folk culture. The prototype was a mythical character of a “hare”. Due to the obscuration of the original image, modern semantics is based on the anthroponym “Pylyp” – the performer of the mental action of the person. As the original image became obscure, the modern semantics of this notion is based on the anthroponym “Pylyp” – the one performing the mental action of a person.