European paremiology anciently evolved in an organic synthesis with paremiography. Paremias (i.e. proverbs and sayings) are incrusted not only in the text as it necessary part, but also create texts «in sich» and «an sich», forming a collection of folk and the literary wisdom.
Gradually this Paremiological trend developed into a special lexicographic genre, the founder of which was Erasmus beginning from the 16. centuary. His collection of proverbs and sayings (Adagia, 1500) defined the parameters of this lexicographic genre for the future. At the same time, it indicated his successor to the many complex problems compiling Paremiological thesaurus that has not been completely resolved yet. To some extent this problem is the part of the problems of common lexical lexicography. However, the specificity of proverbs as a small folklore genre, independent mini-text and at the same time - a part of a larger text - gives rise to difficulties in the special order arising from structural and semantic characteristics of paremias compared to lexems. The main differences are such as the separatedness of the form and the semantic bifurcation of the sayings and a complete syntactic structure of the proverbs.
The report will consider the influence of these characteristics on their proverbs lexicographical description in the Paremiological thesaurus. Main features, principally enfluenced the type of the Paremiological thesaurus, have the character of the following oppositions:
1. Nationally oriented (monolingual) Thesaurus – internationally oriented (multilingual) thesaurus.
2. Formal (alphabetical) – semantical (ideographic) order of the material in the thesaurus.
3. Definition of proverbs in the thesaurus – no definitions.
4. Cultural, historical and etymological commentaries – without commentaries.
5. Codification of the proverbial variants – no codification.
6. The exact chronological and local documentation – no documentation.
7. Stylistic qualification – its absence.
8. Differentiation of "core" and "periphery" (Paremiological minimum and maximum) – no differentiation.
9. "Own" – "Alien." Nationalization of European Paremiological thesauri.
Each of the reviewed oppositions determines the nature and genre features of the European Paremiological thesauri. The own experience of the author are presented in the report.