What is the meaning of "бавовна" (cotton) referring to explosions?

Question

Recently, Ukrainian news and social media began to use the word бавовна (cotton) to refer explosions on russia and its military settlements:

• "Бавовна" в Криму: в мережі з'явилося відео з наслідками вибуху
• Ранкова "бавовна": у російському Єйську за 30 км від Маріуполя палає нафтобаза
• "Бавовна" несподівано спіткала білорусь: у мережі пишуть про вибухи на аеродромі під Гомелем

What is the importance of this term and its origin?

Answer 1

Бавовна /bavóvna/ is a recently-introduced meme about the current russo-Ukrainian war (2014-current). It is, indeed, a linguistic phenomenon.

There are three factors at play here:

1. Throughout recent years, russian propaganda uses various euphemisms and newspeak to diminish the importance of catastrophic events in its controlled territories: terms like "newly available manpower" for "rise in unemployment", "water-soaking" for "flood", "a negative rise of the economic growth" for "economic decline", etc. One of the most used terms is хлопо́к (/xlopók/ - clap, pop) for "explosion".
   The Ukrainian word for "clap" is also хлопо́к; note the stress on the 2nd syllable.

2. The word хло́пок (/xlópok/ - cotton) has the same spelling, except it has stress on the 1st syllable.
   The Ukrainian word for "cotton" is бавовна.

3. Like everywhere, russian Internet trolls continue the information war on Ukrainian social media. Most of them do not speak Ukrainian, but they pretend as Ukrainians in order to deceive Ukrainians. They use machine translation from russian to Ukrainian, which leads to the following kind of posts:

   

   Слышен мощный хлопок _rus - a severe clap was heard;
   Чулася потужна бавовна ^ukr - a severe cotton was heard.

Once appeared, this word became a meme from there on and began its own evolution in Ukrainian social networks and on public news agencies to denote explosions on russian military bases and on the front line.

In her speech on Ukraine's Independence Day, British Ambassador to Ukraine Melinda Simmons appeared with a bouquet of sunflowers and bavovna flowers:

Additionally, the visual appearance of a cotton flower resembles an explosion, so modern AI (Artificial Intellect) engines, when asked for бавовна на курорті (cotton on a beach), draw pictures like this:

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Sources:

• Wiktionary
• Urban Dictionary