The present article focuses on the contemporary tendencies in the development of scientific technical vocabulary. The rapid scientific and technological progress results in the development of special language, which in turn requires the application of new methods of linguistic analysis and the study of pragmatic aspects of the scientific technical vocabulary. Analysis of contextual meaning of words they acquire in the process of meaning shift and extension is of considerable theoretical and practical importance. The results obtained may be used both as empirical data for creation and updating of linguistic corpora and as a medium for further study of meaning transfer and meaning extension in the process of development of the language in any specific scientific technical domain, thus contributing to a better understanding of these complex processes.