barbecue

A plate of barbecue (foreground) with sauce, beans and bread.

Meanings

A fireplace or pit for grilling food, typically used outdoors and traditionally employing hot charcoal as the heating medium.
A meal or event highlighted by food cooked in such an apparatus.
Meat, especially pork or beef, which has been cooked in such an apparatus (i.e. smoked over indirect heat from high-smoke fuels) and then chopped up or shredded.
A hog, ox, or other large animal roasted or broiled whole for a feast.
A floor on which coffee beans are sun-dried.
A framework of sticks.

To cook food on a barbecue; to smoke it over indirect heat from high-smoke fuels.
To grill.

From mid-17th century. Borrowed from Spanish barbacoa, from Taíno barbakoa ("framework of sticks"), the raised wooden structure the natives used to either sleep on or cure meat. Originally . barbacoa.

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