The present article focuses on the contemporary tendencies in the development of terminology in scientific and technical texts. Taking into consideration the processes undergoing in the development of contemporary technical texts in general and the genre of popular science in particular, metaphorical competence has become one of the most essential among the large number of linguistic and extra-linguistic competences necessary for a translator of specialized texts. The aim of the present article is to study the mechanism of semantic shifts based on the cognitive theory of metaphor. The research is conducted considering the taxonomy of the semantic field of the concept BODY, the elements of which are used as the basis of nomination of many metaphoric terms in Civil Engineering and Architecture. The processes of meaning formation and extension are illustrated in the article on the basis of contrastive analysis of terms used in popular-scientific texts in the English and Latvian languages.