摘要:This paper deals with Croatian number idioms, which are idiomatic expressions featuring a number as one of its lexical components. It is based on a cognitive linguistic research on the motivation of idiom meaning in which 200 native speakers of Croatian participated. The numerical idioms tested have a high degree of semantic opacity, which resulted in different accounts and interpretations of the motivation of meaning among the participants. Number idioms very rarely invoke conventional scenes in the minds of speakers, so the motivation of meaning of the analysed idioms is not only explained by cognitive mechanisms such as metaphor, metonymy and conventional knowledge but rather folk etymology, which cognitive linguistics also considers as one of the mechanisms involved in the interpretation of idioms.