Introduction. The dichotomy “own – foreign” is a phenomenon determined anthropologically and characterized by a variable interpretation depending on the epistemological direction throughout the history of mankind. Categorical representations of “foreignness” differ in unrelated linguistic worldviews, which testifies to the linguocultural status of the category. The purpose of the paper is to characterise the semantic changes of the category “foreignness” / “Fremdheit” reflected in lexicographical sources of Russian and German languages and to establish the logic of interpretation of this category in different chronological periods of social development. Materials and methods. Lexicographic sources and bilingual Russian – German dictionaries reflecting the linguistic facts of various chronological periods (the Middle Ages, the 19th century, the 20th–21st centuries) formed the empirical base of the study. Developing the research topic, the author used descriptive, contextual-pragmatic methods, definitional and comparative analyses, taking into account the linguocultural paradigm of the studied languages. Results of the research, discussions. Three main and two figurative lexical-semantic variants of the meaning of the word “foreigner” are distinguished in Russian: 1) definition of belonging, the right of possession, 2) identification of the degree of blood kinship and correlation with the place of birth, 3) readiness for cognition, acquaintance, 4) and 5) meanings describe spiritual distance, unwillingness to get closer. There is a diachronic change in the axiological parameter of the category: the transition from a negative connotation to neutral. Four semantic meanings with the differentiating features of locality, belonging, recognisability, and conformity to the norm have taken root in German, the key ones being the categories of space and personality. Conclusion. Attribution to the “foreigner” category in two linguocultures is determined by local, possessive, epistemic, normative, emotional-fluctuating features. The attributive, epistemic and normative features are leading in the Russian linguoculture to define a “foreigner”, the connotation of meanings varies from neutral to moderately positive; in the German linguoculture the local feature is the most significant. The emotional-fluctuating attribute is manifested to a lesser extent in both Russian and German.