Title: Where Does the Word "Barbecue" Come From?
Categories: Bbq Info
Yield: 1 Servings

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The word barbecue is one of the oldest Americanisms, found in English in the seventeenth century.

It's a borrowing from American Spanish barbacoa, which in turn is taken from an Arawakan word, possibly from Taino, Arawakan being a family of Native American languages spoken or formerly spoken in several parts of the Caribbean and Central and South America and Taino being an Arawakan language of the Greater Antilles. This Native American word referred to a wooden grid on which the meat was roasted or dried. (It actually referred to any wooden grid, including one used as a bed, but the idea of sleeping on a barbecue is so unnerving that I'll relegate it to a parenthetical note.)

The earliest example of barbecue is in 1661, when it is used as a verb meaning 'to cook on a barbecue'. Other early senses include 'the wooden framework for supporting food'; 'a whole animal, or a piece of an animal, roasted on a barbecue'; and 'a social gathering at which food is cooked on a barbecue'.

Many barbecue purists today reserve the word only for specific processes, for example the slow cooking of meat coated in a pungent vinegar-based sauce, and insist that simply cooking food over a flame be called grilling. However, in actual use barbecue is applied widely to any sort of open cooking.

The usual spelling is barbecue, but barbeque is a frequent variant, and Bar-B-Q and other forms are found as well.

From Jesse Sheidlower's Word a Day from Random House.

JB John Benz Fentner, Jr. Unionville, Connecticut, USA http://www.geocities.com/~jbenz/

From: "John Benz Fentner, Jr." Date: 03 Sep 97 Chile-Heads List Ä

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