Abstract
The text aims to introduce the metaphorical use of the concept of water in a broad sense in Croatian and Czech language. We assume that water is an inevitable experience of every human community and it is so important for its life that it is not possible to avoid using the experience with this element to formulate various metaphorical expressions allowing insight into other abstract phenomena and situations that have no direct expression of human experience.
On the other hand, it is obvious that the cultural experience of water in individual nations differs depending on the experience with the water bodies which they meet in their real geospace. For this reason, we decided to compare the Croatian and Czech languages, ie. to compare the languages of nations, one of which has a cultural experience with the sea as a body of water, while the experience of the other one applies in principle to small water bodies in the form of ponds, streams and small rivers.
The goal of the analysis does not provide an exhaustive set of metaphorical expressions of water, but we aim to formulate and compare cognitive concepts used by the both languages.