Past tense of barbeque; cooked meat or food slowly over hot coals or smoke, usually outdoors.
From Spanish 'barbacoa,' which came from Taíno (Caribbean language) 'barbacoa' meaning a framework for roasting. The word traveled from the Caribbean to Spanish, then to English through cultural contact.
The word barbecue traveled the same route as the cooking method itself—from the Taíno people of the Caribbean, who invented the technique, through Spanish colonizers, and into English, making it one of the few cooking words we borrowed from indigenous peoples.
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