The paper reveals structural and semantic peculiarities of the two-step epithet. Within the frames of studying the linguistic nature of the two-step epithet, we give its definition, distinguish four morphologicalsyntactic models, reveal the affective and expressive potential of these lexical units. It has also been stated that standard semantic classifications of epithets prove to be inconsistent from the viewpoint of their application in the analysis of the two-step epithets due to their dual nature. Taking its paradigmatic and syntagmatic characteristics into consideration, our classification of two-step epithet describes semantic relations in its structure in complete and consistent way. Two-step epithets have been subdivided into metaphoric and metonymic on the basis of paradigmatic criterion. From the viewpoint of syntagmatics, we have distinguished specifying, synonymic, and oxymoron epithets, in which the relations between their components are those of mutual complementarity, identity and contrast. Apart from these types, a number of rarely used two-step epithets can be distinguished. The semantic relations between their components are represented as tautology, inequality, quality, quantity, and irony. We mark the flexibility of boundaries between the types of semantic relations in the structure of the two-step epithet. The research material is represented with 540 two-step epithets sampled from original English fiction of the 19th - 20th centuries.