Studia Językoznawcze

The aim of the paper is to show how the connotations and marking of the term barszcz ukraiński on social media were changing after the war in Ukraine had started. Research material features a wide spectrum of posts from various social media posted in the first weeks of the conflict and in April and July 2022 (right after the key events for the functioning of the term under review here). Social media constitute a space that is most frequently chosen by Internet users for commenting on important events and sociopolitical situation or reacting to current trends. The form of social media posts is casual, direct, concise and not stripped of the emotions of those who write them. Because of that, the analysis of the research material clearly shows the transformation of meaning from a culinary term, used in an informational function to a term of a symbolic meaning. The analysis of Internet sources is preceded by a discussion of the functioning of the lexeme barszcz (borcht) and the analytical term barszcz ukraiński in the Polish language starting from the earliest times to the modernity, which allows for the presentation of the evolution of the meaning from a botanical name to a culinary one.