A Russian linguist V. Šercl (1843-1906) is known, on the one hand, as the author of various papers on the formal aspects of language (as, for instance, Comparative Grammar of Slavic and Other Cognate Languages /1871-1873/) and, on the other hand, as a semasiologist (see, for example, his work on enantiosemy /1884/). It is the latter area of Šercl’s activity that requires closer attention. The article focuses on Šercl’s works On Concreteness in Language (1884) and Basic Elements of Language and Principles of its Development (1885-1889). Considering these works in the context of modern scientific paradigm, the author of the article emphasizes their great significance for historical semasiology and typologic study of semantics. Despite the fact that arduous work at critical analysis of the examples provided by Šercl is still ahead, the author of the article claims Šercl to have tried to reveal lexical and semantic universals long before the dictionaries of C. D. Buck and J. Schröpfer were published. Thus V. Šercl can undoubtedly be placed among those who stood at the beginning of Russian and European „semasiological” thought.