The article considers the description of political vocabulary in national contexts, examines the meanings obtained by a lexeme and based on ideological editorial orientation. The authors carry out the comparative analysis of the texts of the Russian and Polish press for the period from 2014 to 2017 in terms of contexts arising from the use of the lexeme “sanctions”. As a result of the analysis, one can note that, despite the similar vocabulary definitions of the word “sanction”, the shift of semantic meanings occurs in national contexts. The research shows the influence of evaluative ideology on the meaning of the word.