The aim of the article was realized by analyzing peculiarities and the role of linguistic and cultural features of the concept of "war" in English and Ukrainian languages. The examined examples allowed the formulation of the following conclusions. First, mental representations may differ due to linguistic and cultural features. In a particular language and culture, the historical experience of its speakers is concentrated, and the mental representations of these speakers may differ from those of speakers of another language and culture. Secondly, the linguistic picture of the world is the leading research object in modern linguistics. It is a complex process, the study of which is dictated by both the development of linguistics and its specific directions, including linguoculturology. It has been proven that the concept serves as the central unit of this research, defining the historical component of the linguistic picture of the world and intending to explore the English language in conjunction with the culture and consciousness of the people. It is noted that in society, the linguistic and cultural concept of war plays a vital role as it occupies one of the central positions in the life of any nation. The historical-etymological and etymological analysis of words that appeared in the English language during the XXth century during armed conflicts allows identifying additional, previously unnoticed lexical-semantic features in the content of the key lexeme of the linguistic and cultural concept of war. The conclusion is drawn that the English language is undergoing another stage of development and enrichment with new words due to current armed conflicts. As this process still needs to be completed, it will continue attracting special attention from linguists to track changes in vocabulary in real time. Thus, the conceptual characteristics of the concept of war in Ukrainian and English language consciousness are a branching multitude of features, the central part of which is reflected with a significant degree of completeness in the definitions of explanatory dictionaries. Beyond these definitions, there remain characteristics of two types -etymological characteristics of concepts, on the one hand, and the most significant emotionally evaluative representations of war for the bearers of linguistic and cultural, on the other hand. The analysis of definitions in explanatory dictionaries, thesauri, and synonym dictionaries shows that the content of the conceptual component of the concept of war largely coincides with the mass and professional consciousness of Ukrainian and English speakers. The significant civilizational similarity between them can explain it. Differences are secondary and additional in nature, established in the associative field of concepts, and mainly come down to two points: the idea of eradicating the enemy in case of war in Ukrainian language consciousness (which is determined by the concentrated collective memory of the Ukrainian people regarding wars with ethnic groups that did not take prisoners of war, but exterminated them) and the idea of competitiveness as one of the characteristics of war in English consciousness (this understanding corresponds to the medieval knightly code of conduct).
