The object of the research is similes in the language of literary works. The purpose of the research is to study and analyse the systematic organization of similes at lexico-semantic level of the language and to reveal the main trends of creation of the vocabulary-semantic paradigm of the simile. The main methods of the research are as follows: descriptive method and componential analysis. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is the following: this type of systematic organization of the language is being researched in Belorussian linguistics for the first time, i.e. distinguishing of lexical-semantic groups of similes, defining semasiological relations between trope components, interrelationship between expression and content.