barbecue

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to cook outdoors on a grill

   We barbecued the steaks.

2. 2
   noun

   A fireplace or pit for grilling food, typically used outdoors and traditionally employing hot charcoal as the heating medium.

   We cooked our food on the barbecue.

3. 3
   noun

   A meal or event highlighted by food cooked in such an apparatus.

   We're having a barbecue on Saturday, and you're invited.

4. 4
   noun

   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.

   She ordered a plate of barbecue with a side of slaw.

5. 5
   noun

   A floor on which coffee beans are sun-dried.

   Drying the coffee beans took place in a barbecue, basically a large, flat platform, where the pulped coffee beans could be laid out and turned as they dried. Barbecues were often walled around and raised above ground level.

6. 6
   noun

   A framework of sticks.

   1705, William Dampier, Voyages and Descriptions, Volume 2, London: James Knapton, “A Supplement of the Voyage Round the World,” Chapter 5, p. 90, We found no Houses of Entertainment on the Road, yet at every Village we came we got Houseroom, and a Barbacue of split Bambooes to sleep on.

7. 7
   verb

   To kill or destroy using high heat or fire; to cook; to burn.

   Then he picked up a flamethrower and he barbecued Blitzen And he took a big bite and said, "It tastes just like chicken"

8. 8
   noun

   a rack to hold meat for cooking over hot charcoal usually out of doors

Etymology

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 “meal of roasted meat or fish”. Doublet of balbacua and barbacoa.