Principles of Larin's lexicography in the three-volume Big Dictionary of Proverbs, Sayings and Similes of the Russian language

1. The principle of lexicographic completeness. The three volumes of the dictionary give a synthetic description of nationwide phraseology of the national language, that is, the lexical corpus includes both folk idioms and literary idioms, including many phrases of international origin. 2. The principle of accurate certification of the material allows localizing each proverb in our dictionaries in time and space. 3. The principle of temporal and spatial characteristics of the described units. Each saying in our dictionary is precisely localized on the map of Russia. The main purpose of such a certification is to give to the reader the most accurate and complete chronological and spatial characteristics of units. Accurate material certification is especially valuable because it allows proving mathematically the "persistence" of folklore of the small genre in space and time. 4. The principle of retrospective linguistic and cultural characteristics. Retrospective linguistic and cultural information is offered in the dictionary as required, and decoding of the interpreted image is given. Frequently, such decoding is detailed historical and etymological or linguistic-cultural information. 5. The principle of comprehensive descriptions of vocables allows approaching the definition of proverbs and sayings more differentially and supposes a system characteristic of each described word. Most of the units in our dictionaries are described by a single coherent and detailed composition: 1) vocable expression, 2) stylistic characteristics (usage, the scope of distribution, the expressive and stylistic qualification), 3) accurate and complete interpretation of the meaning, 4) accurate certification of source, 5) explanation of history and etymology, interpretation (especially of dialect, slang or foreign language) of incomprehensible words in the proverb or saying.