If you haven’t encountered either the word barbecue or barbeque by now, you surely can expect to see it over the summer months.
For many people, the summer months mean grilling outdoors. Memorial Day serves as the unofficial kickoff of summer. So you might suggest that it also doubles as the unofficial kickoff of cookout season, too. But should you call that cookout a barbecue or barbeque?
Both spellings — along with the abbreviation BBQ — seem pretty common. But some sources will tell you one of them is more correct than the other.
The Online Etymology Dictionarypp tells us the word barbecue entered the language in the 1690s from the American Spanish word barbacoa. That word came from the word barbakoa, from the Haitian Arawakan language and it referred to the raised framework that West Indians used to either sleep on or to cure meat on.
Neither of those sound like they have much to do with either a modern barbecue or barbeque, do they?
Two different meanings eventually emerged
When different parts of the country hear the word, they’re likely to picture very different things.
In much of the country, particularly in the North, Midwest and the West, when you mention that word, you’re talking about a cookout. It looks a lot like the picture above. You grill food — it doesn’t matter so much what kind of food you grill. But you grill outside.
But in the South, it carries a different meaning. Here, we think of some kind of meat — often pork, but it could be beef or chicken — cooked over a grill. When you visit the South, you’ll find restaurants with big “BBQ” signs. One of their most popular menu items tends to be pulled (or shredded) pork. It looks like this:
They serve it in sandwiches or as a main course with different sides. Those sides might include rice and hash, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, corn, yams or cole slaw. Depending on where you go, it might seem there are no end to the side item possibilities!
Depending on what part of the South you visit, you’ll find different sauces. In my home state of South Carolina, mustard-based sauce is king. In North Carolina, vinegar-based sauce rules. Parts of Tennessee prefer tomato-based sauces. But each state seems to have all three.
The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us the meaning of that outdoor feast dates back to 1733. But the more popular definition of a grill for cooking over an open fire is much younger. It came along in 1931. That BBQ thing didn’t show up until around 1956.
But should it be barbecue or barbeque?
Now that I’ve tempted you with food, let’s answer the basic question: The word is correctly spelled with a C, not a Q. The alternate spelling likely came along because the word is pronounced “BAR-be-Q,” and since the last syllable is pronounced the way you’d pronounce either the word cue or queue, barbeque might have arrived as an innocent misspelling. But I’ve even seen some try to spell it as “Bar-B-Q,” which is also wrong, but it gets the pronunciation across, at least.
The Associated Press Stylebook, the style guide newsrooms across the globe rely on, recently posted this update on X:
Well, the best barbecue style in my book is that gold mustard-based. But if you have a different favorite, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. (For the record, I don’t mind that rich tomato-based sauce, particularly on spare ribs. But I’ll take mustard-based on pulled pork and usually it’s my preference on chicken, too. The vinegar-based just doesn’t really do it for me, I’m afraid.)
So whether you’re talking about the grilling event or the cooked meat that results, I hope you enjoy any summer barbecues you’re fortunate enough to attend!
