n keeping with the season, the podictionary word for today is barbecue . Barbecue came into English toward the end of the 17th century.
Picture an island paradise back then with thatched huts up on stilts. Well, perhaps it wasn't completely paradise because the reason the huts are on stilts is to keep out all the vermin running around. Where the huts themselves weren't on stilts sometimes instead of simply sleeping on the ground people rigged up a platform of sticks to sleep on. In the Bahamas and Antilles the native Taino people called this raised frame a barbacoa and the Spanish who started arriving at the beginning of the 16th century adopted the word, which English adopted in turn. From a platform above the ground to sleep on to a platform above a fire to cook on barbecue shifted its meaning.
And the shifting has continued because now we recognize a barbecue not only as a device to cook with, but as a party where the device is used, the food that comes off the device and even the greater meal in which the food is included.
