The following paper deals with the findings of a corpus-based research of the verb SIT (as a posture verb) in three languages: Croatian, English and German. Taking into account the central principles of Cognitive Linguistics, the figurative meanings are due to the embodiment of the concept as well as grounded in schemas such as CONTAINMENT and GOOD-FIT2 in the languages under study, although there are cross-linguistic differences regarding the saliency of a particular image schema. For example, CONTAINMENT is more salient in English and German than in Croatian. The different paths of meaning extension of the meanings of these concepts are attributed to idiosyncratic features of each of the languages analyzed. For example, sit in English accepts a transitive interpretation in constructions such as “sit X on Y” (e.g. sit the child on a chair; sit meat on a plate) , unlike its Croatian and German counterparts