The origins of both the activity of barbecue cooking and the word itself are somewhat obscure. Most
etymologists believe that
barbecue derives ultimately from the word
barbacoa found in the language of the
Taíno people of the
Caribbean. The word translates as "sacred fire pit" and is also spelled
barbacoa.
[2] The word describes a grill for cooking meat, consisting of a wooden platform resting on sticks.
Traditional
barbacoa involves digging a hole in the ground and placing some meat (usually a whole
goat) with a pot underneath it, so that the juices can make a hearty broth. It is then covered with
maguey leaves and coal and set alight. The cooking process takes a few hours.
There is ample evidence that both the word and cooking technique migrated out of the Caribbean and into other languages and cultures, with the word moving from Caribbean dialects into
Spanish, then
French and
English. The
Oxford English Dictionary cites the first recorded use of the word in the English language in 1697 by the British buccaneer
William Dampier.
[3]
The word evolved into its modern English spelling of
barbecue and may also be found spelled as
barbeque,
bar-b-q or
bbq.
[4] In the southeastern
United States, the word
barbecue is used predominantly as a noun referring to roast
pork, while in the southwestern states, cuts of
beef are often cooked.
The word
barbecue has attracted several inaccurate origins from
folk etymology. An often-repeated claim is that the word is derived from the
French language. The story goes that French visitors to the Caribbean saw a pig being cooked whole and described the method as
barbe à queue, meaning "from beard to tail". The French word for
barbecue is also
barbecue, and the "beard to tail" explanation is regarded as false by most language experts. The only merit is that it relies on the similar sound of the words, a feature common in folk-etymology explanations.
[5] Another claim states that the word
BBQ came from the time when
roadhouses and beer joints with
pool tables advertised "Bar, Beer and Cues". According to this tale, the phrase was shortened over time to
BBCue, then
BBQ.
[6]
