This paper has two main purposes: 1) to present a possible semantic account of phraseological meaning from a cognitive perspective and 2) to show the presence, the extent and the content of mental images and concepts in Spanish and Polish somatic phraseology.

I briefly define the notion of concept, its relationship with linguistic form and the mental image. After narrowing the notion of phraseologial unit, the main part of this paper focuses on an application of the notions of mental image and concept to selected somatic idioms. The phraseological units contain the somatic word boca ‘mouth’ as part of them and are presented by meaning correspondence in the Polish language. In the final section I point out to a possible difference with respect to the structure of meaning which could have natural and cultural implications.