Abstract: the article offers a review of the scholarly inter-institute meeting, which addressed the studies in the field of lexicology and lexicography, the “The Orientalist Readings 2018”. The meeting was held in the year of the 200th anniversary of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Among the most important topics covered during the meeting were the criteria used to define the term “word” in Oriental languages as well as related topics dealing with “lexical complexes” and expressions. Additionally, there were communications regarding the history of the Oriental lexicography as well as ways and methods used for building up dictionaries. The latter covered both traditional bilingual dictionaries and thesauri as well as modern dictionaries, which deal with the Internet slang and punctuation. Along with the mainstream topics the participants paid attention and made interesting remarks and observations regarding the field of lexicology and lexical semantics of Oriental languages.