The purpose of the article is to justify the role of explanatorydictionaries that form the empirical basis for investigating the lexical semantics ofnouns denoting values. Special attention is paid to revealing the essence ofdictionary articles in terms of their main characteristics as well as to establishingpractical significance of definition analysis as a formalized foundation forUkrainian, English and French axionomens research. The deployment of adictionary article in most lexicographic resources of explanatory character isbased on three main characteristics: dictionary definitions (the paradigmatic partof a dictionary article proper), illustrative material (its syntagmatic part) and thetagging system. The dictionary article is a complex of formal signs with aconcretized structure from which it is impossible to remove or to which no part canbe added so as not to change other parts and do not cause general rearrangement.Since the dictionary article acts as a tool of the lexical meaning interpretation ofthe register unit, its intersection with other distinctive formal signs allows todescribe correlations between the lexical meanings in the language system bymeans of formalized method. Taking into account the informational amount ofdictionary definitions will provide the further determining a seme as a componentof lexical mening of specifically-chosen words denoting values. The prospect ofresearch is to analyze language objectivization of Ukrainian, English and Frenchcultural axiological categories presented with words denoting philosophical, worldoutlook, scientific, social, political, moral, religious, legal, aesthetic values.