The article outlines the role of commonly used terms of the modern Ukrainian terminological system of the field of civil defence: civil protection, civil security, civil defence. The peculiarities of terminological nominations functioning in analyzed term systems have been revealed.
Such terms, as civil protection, civil defence, civil security are very frequent in modern Ukrainian civil protection terminology corpus, but using these terms needs terminological normalization at the level of relevant legislative documents and at the level of oral and written professional communication.
These terminological units are often confused in professional communication, despite some differences in their definitions and denotations.
The significant changes in the definition and denotation of civil protection terms show a constant upgrading of a relevant term system as a part of the modern Ukrainian scientific language according to the social development and the need for recording in sectorial conceptual terminological dictionaries.
Existing synonymous terms should be avoided in national and international legislative civil protection documents for the standardization of such terminology.