This article researches the debatable issue in semasiology, particularly the origin of an idiom captured in four Slavic languages: Ukrainian zbyty z pantelyku, Russian sbit’ s pantalyku, Belarusian zbits’ z pantalyku, Polish zbić z pantałyku. The subject of analysis is fictional texts and lexicographical sources in which this phraseological unit first appeared. All etymological hypotheses developed by language experts during 19th-20th centuries were dedicated to the explanation of the word «pantelyk». The difficulty of revealing the figurative basis of the expression is due to the fact that this keyword does not belong to the Slavic vocabulary. This circumstance made it complicated to explain how the term «pantelyk» influenced the original figurative meaning of the idiom «seduce out of the right way». The new etymological version, offered by the article’s author, is that the idiom zbyty z pantelyku can be reconstructed as a semantic chain: throw off a course → seduce out of the right way → to throw into confusion → zbyty z pantelyku. The word «pantelyk», which wasn’t a part of any dialect, is a nonce formation or an occasional expression that emerged as a result of a burlesque travesty genre in the poem Eneyida by Ivan Kotlyarevsky.

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.