Bałwan Polish, balvan/балван Serbian (literally wood block) or balvan Kyrgyz – today, literally indistinguishable from everyday word for snowman, is an ancient word common to all Slavic languages, describing a statuesque or monolithic depiction or a pillar or a plinth depicting or erected in honor of a deity. This object was worshipped, or constituted a tangible representation of a cult image. The Western Slavs transcribed and pronounced the word as bałwan (in American English pronounced: BOW as in the phrase bow-wow and von as in Stratford-Upon-Avon, with the accent on the penultimate (in this case, the first) syllable, as is the typical stress), which is its contemporary and old Polish lexical manifestation, whereas the Southern Slavs and the Eastern Slavs used the just slightly differen