The work is devoted to the study of potential nouns and adjectives. The purpose of the study is to identify the place of potential words in the word-formation system of the Russian language. The following methods of linguistic analysis were used in the work: a synchronous-descriptive method, including observation, comparison, juxtaposition, generalization, interpretation of linguistic data, and system analysis method. The material for the description was mainly the works of E. Yevtushenko. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that potential words are a product of speech, not language. But they represent part of the general word formation and stand out in it. Potential words are laid down by the word-formation system of the language itself, created based on productive models of the Russian word-formation system. They can fill in the empty cells of word-formation paradigms using productive word-formation models. The study of trends in the development of modern Russian word formation has an undoubted theoretical significance for the development of the science of word formation, which makes it possible to study the mechanism of the emergence of new words. Also, it makes it possible to practically apply the findings in university teaching of word formation, lexicology of the Russian language, in the practice of compiling dictionaries, etc.