{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "barbecue",
 "type": "term",
 "names": {
  "name": "barbecue",
  "aliases": [
   "bar-b-q",
   "bar-b-que",
   "barbeque",
   "BBQ",
   "'cue",
   "cue",
   "Q"
  ],
  "said": "In the Carolinas the word is a noun for the cooked pork: you eat barbecue, you do not 'have a barbecue'. The grill in the yard is a grill; cooking on it is grilling."
 },
 "etymology": {
  "root": "Taíno (Arawakan) barbacoa, a framework of sticks set on posts → Spanish barbacoa (1526, Oviedo) → English barbecue (1660s: the frame and the method; the cooked animal and the gathering by the 1700s)",
  "first_attested": "English 1661, Edmund Hickeringill's Jamaica Viewed ('Barbacu'd'), per the OED as quoted in the Wikipedia article; 'barbecado' in 1648; as a noun 1697, William Dampier. Spanish barbacoa printed by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, 1526.",
  "note": "The folk etymology from French barbe à queue ('beard to tail', i.e. the whole animal) is a joke first printed in the eighteenth century and has no standing; the Taíno origin is the dictionary etymology. Spellings with -que and Bar-B-Q are twentieth-century sign-painting and are as common on Carolina signs as the dictionary form.",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-barbecue"
 },
 "region": [
  "carolinas",
  "us-south"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "letter": "B",
  "part_of_speech": "noun"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "The cooked meat itself — in the Carolinas, pork cooked slowly over coals or in a cooker and then chopped, pulled or sliced — and, by extension, the place that sells it and the gathering that eats it. Elsewhere in the country the same word means a grill, or a cookout of any meat; here the narrower sense is the ordinary one.",
  "story": "The word came north from the Caribbean with the Spanish and into English by way of the colonial Atlantic: a frame of sticks first, then the method, then the meat. Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1755 already gives the Carolina sense — 'to barbecue: a term for dressing a whole hog', and the noun, 'a hog dressed whole'. *Tradition holds —* the whole-animal feast over wood coals was the shape of the colonial Southern gathering by the eighteenth century, and the political barbecue, a free feed put on by a candidate, was an institution of the early republic. *Inference —* the Carolina insistence that barbecue is a noun for pork is a memory of that feast: what was cooked at the rally was the pig, and the pig was what you came for."
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "eastern-nc",
   "as": "one of the two North Carolina answers to what the word means: the whole hog, chopped, with vinegar.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "to": "lexington",
   "as": "the other North Carolina answer: pork shoulder with a red dip.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "to": "pig-pickin",
   "as": "the gathering the word also names — a barbecue as an event, still a pig.",
   "rel": "event"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "barbecue — Online Etymology Dictionary",
   "url": "https://www.etymonline.com/word/barbecue"
  },
  {
   "label": "Barbecue — Wikipedia (Etymology)",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue#Etymology"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:etymonline",
  "s:wp-barbecue",
  "s:oed",
  "s:moss-barbecue-history",
  "s:flickr-commons",
  "s:flickr-ncsa",
  "s:ncsa-condev",
  "s:greenville-union-bleachery"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:etymonline"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "tradition",
    "note": "the colonial feast and the political barbecue are the subject of Moss (2010); the last sentence is this project's inference"
   },
   "names.said": {
    "tier": "tradition",
    "note": "usage as reported by Reed & Reed and by every Carolina pit's menu"
   },
   "etymology": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-barbecue",
    "note": "OED dates as quoted there; etymonline agrees on the Taíno origin"
   },
   "images[0]": {
    "tier": "harvested",
    "source": "s:ncsa-condev",
    "note": "read on the photograph's own Flickr page 2026-09-16: “No known copyright restrictions”; the file, its sha256 and that statement are in the sidecar beside it"
   },
   "images[1]": {
    "tier": "harvested",
    "source": "s:greenville-union-bleachery",
    "note": "read on the item's own page 2026-09-16: “Public Domain”; the file, its sha256 and that statement are in the sidecar beside it"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [
  {
   "file": "barbecue/barbecue-crowd-braswell-1944.jpg",
   "source": "flickr",
   "title": "ConDev4649_Overview",
   "url": "https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/47111378764_3d51e8c93f_k.jpg",
   "page_url": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/north-carolina-state-archives/47111378764/",
   "license": "No known copyright restrictions",
   "license_url": "https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/",
   "author": "John Hemmer; State Archives of North Carolina",
   "credit": "Department of Conservation and Development, Travel Information Division Photograph Collection, State Archives of North Carolina",
   "alt": "A state News Bureau sheet of four prints headed Barbeque, Braswell Plantation near Rocky Mount, Sept 1944. One shows a crowd standing among tall pines with plates in their hands, children in front, wagons and mules at the treeline. One shows a queue several hundred people long curving away under the trees. One looks down on servers working a line of trestle tables spread with large pans, people filing past with plates. The fourth is close: a woman and three small children sitting on the grass, plates of food and a cup set out on the ground beside them, the smallest child in a white sun hat eating with her fingers.",
   "date": "1944-09",
   "primary": true,
   "sha256": "692460bd7dfa658e8884a320bee196ca1259943b4c8bced1709869397e4f9969",
   "width": 2048,
   "height": 1797
  },
  {
   "file": "barbecue/barbecue-union-bleachery-annual-barbecue.jpg",
   "source": "other",
   "title": "Annual Barbecue",
   "url": "https://greenvillelibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/iiif/2/p17168coll61:45/full/1400,/0/default.jpg",
   "page_url": "https://cdm17168.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17168coll61/id/45",
   "license": "Public domain",
   "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/",
   "author": "Greenville County Library System",
   "credit": "Union Bleachery collection, Greenville County Library System; from the Union Bleachery Historical Society",
   "alt": "A crowded outdoor serving line, printed as a newspaper halftone so the dot screen shows. Along the near side of long trestle tables, women in aprons and short sleeves serve: one ladles from a metal bucket, another lifts bread rolls out of a big open cardboard carton, a third fills a plate held out to her. Men in shirtsleeves, ties and summer hats file past on the far side with plates and bowls. Behind them the queue winds back uphill among trees past a wooden rail fence, dozens more people standing and sitting on the slope. A galvanised tub stands in the near corner.",
   "date": "circa 1950s",
   "primary": false,
   "sha256": "70e8e9a36f1d81c71cf21027e80c80e816b380cff3fa83c9098751b649d87c99"
  }
 ],
 "confidence": "high",
 "needs_verification": false,
 "updated": "2026-09-15",
 "blurb": "The cooked meat itself — in the Carolinas, pork cooked slowly over coals or in a cooker and then chopped, pulled or sliced — and, by extension, the place that sells it and the gathering that eats it.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "carolinas",
   "name": "The Carolinas",
   "state": null,
   "note": "both states together; use when a node belongs to the whole tradition"
  },
  {
   "key": "us-south",
   "name": "The American South",
   "state": null,
   "note": "for nodes shared with the wider region"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "eastern-nc",
   "type": "style",
   "name": "Eastern North Carolina barbecue",
   "as": "one of the two North Carolina answers to what the word means: the whole hog, chopped, with vinegar.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "to": "lexington",
   "type": "style",
   "name": "Lexington-style barbecue",
   "as": "the other North Carolina answer: pork shoulder with a red dip.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "to": "pig-pickin",
   "type": "event",
   "name": "pig pickin'",
   "as": "the gathering the word also names — a barbecue as an event, still a pig.",
   "rel": "event"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:etymonline",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Online Etymology Dictionary",
   "url": "https://www.etymonline.com/"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-barbecue",
   "kind": "wikipedia",
   "title": "Barbecue — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:oed",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Oxford English Dictionary",
   "url": "https://www.oed.com/",
   "note": "etymologies and first attestations; paywalled — cite the headword"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:moss-barbecue-history",
   "kind": "book",
   "title": "Barbecue: The History of an American Institution",
   "author": "Robert F. Moss",
   "publisher": "University of Alabama Press",
   "year": 2010,
   "note": "revised edition 2020"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:flickr-commons",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "Flickr Commons",
   "publisher": "Flickr, with participating libraries, archives and museums",
   "url": "https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "Institutions publish photographs here under the rights statement 'No known copyright restrictions', which is not a public-domain declaration: the holding institution states it has found no copyright, shares that research without warranty, and asks the user to make an independent assessment before a new use. The statement is per photograph. The same institution's stream holds all-rights-reserved photographs alongside released ones, and the same negative sometimes appears both ways, so each file here was checked on its own page."
  },
  {
   "id": "s:flickr-ncsa",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "State Archives of North Carolina on Flickr Commons",
   "publisher": "State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh",
   "url": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/north-carolina-state-archives/",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "Around 117,000 photographs from the State Archives' photograph collections. Uploads made from about 2015 onward generally carry 'No known copyright restrictions'; a body of 2008-era uploads of the same collections, and in places the same images, carries 'All rights reserved'. Photographs taken here were verified one page at a time; the refused ones are listed in data/harvest/picture-sources.json."
  },
  {
   "id": "s:ncsa-condev",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "Department of Conservation and Development, Travel Information Division Photograph Collection",
   "publisher": "State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh",
   "url": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/north-carolina-state-archives/albums/",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "Photographs made by the state's own News Bureau for publicity use, many of them mounted on printed subject sheets with the locality and date written in by hand. John Hemmer and Bill Sharpe are the photographers named on the barbecue sheets. The sheets are the caption: the pencil on them is quoted in this project's alt text as writing on the object, not as a finding of fact."
  },
  {
   "id": "s:greenville-union-bleachery",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "Union Bleachery collection",
   "publisher": "Greenville County Library System, South Carolina; from the Union Bleachery Historical Society",
   "url": "https://cdm17168.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17168coll61",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "Photographs of the Union Bleachery textile plant at Greenville, including the employees' annual barbecue at Paris Mountain State Park as printed in the company newsletter The Commentator. The item's Rights field reads 'Public Domain'. It is the only openly licensed South Carolina barbecue photograph this project has found."
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:etymonline"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "tradition",
   "note": "the colonial feast and the political barbecue are the subject of Moss (2010); the last sentence is this project's inference"
  },
  "etymology": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-barbecue",
   "note": "OED dates as quoted there; etymonline agrees on the Taíno origin"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": {
  "file": "barbecue/barbecue-crowd-braswell-1944.jpg",
  "source": "flickr",
  "title": "ConDev4649_Overview",
  "url": "https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/47111378764_3d51e8c93f_k.jpg",
  "page_url": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/north-carolina-state-archives/47111378764/",
  "license": "No known copyright restrictions",
  "license_url": "https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/",
  "author": "John Hemmer; State Archives of North Carolina",
  "credit": "Department of Conservation and Development, Travel Information Division Photograph Collection, State Archives of North Carolina",
  "alt": "A state News Bureau sheet of four prints headed Barbeque, Braswell Plantation near Rocky Mount, Sept 1944. One shows a crowd standing among tall pines with plates in their hands, children in front, wagons and mules at the treeline. One shows a queue several hundred people long curving away under the trees. One looks down on servers working a line of trestle tables spread with large pans, people filing past with plates. The fourth is close: a woman and three small children sitting on the grass, plates of food and a cup set out on the ground beside them, the smallest child in a white sun hat eating with her fingers.",
  "date": "1944-09",
  "primary": true,
  "sha256": "692460bd7dfa658e8884a320bee196ca1259943b4c8bced1709869397e4f9969",
  "width": 2048,
  "height": 1797
 },
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "eastern-nc",
   "type": "style",
   "name": "Eastern North Carolina barbecue",
   "as": "the word, which in the east is a noun for this chopped pork and nothing else.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "lexington",
   "type": "style",
   "name": "Lexington-style barbecue",
   "as": "the word, which in the Piedmont is a noun for chopped shoulder with dip.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "barbecue-chicken",
   "type": "dish",
   "name": "barbecue chicken",
   "as": "the noun that excludes it: barbecue is pork, chicken is chicken.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "lewis-barbecue",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Lewis Barbecue",
   "as": "the word, meaning beef on this menu.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "smithfields-chicken-n-bar-b-q",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Smithfield's Chicken 'N Bar-B-Q",
   "as": "the word on 41 signs, spelled three ways.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "the-fiction-kitchen",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "The Fiction Kitchen",
   "as": "the word, stretched to cover a dish cooked without an animal — which is a thing the word is doing in the Carolinas now.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "john-shelton-reed",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "John Shelton Reed",
   "as": "the word his 2016 Savor the South book takes as its whole title.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "robert-moss",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Robert F. Moss",
   "as": "his 2010 history is the source behind the colonial feast and the political barbecue in the word's story.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "pig-pickin",
   "type": "event",
   "name": "pig pickin'",
   "as": "the noun the east uses for what comes off the pig, and the word for the gathering itself.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "political-barbecue",
   "type": "event",
   "name": "political barbecue",
   "as": "the word that also names the gathering.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "hog",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "hog",
   "as": "the word that in the east means the hog after cooking.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "pulled-pork",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "pulled pork",
   "as": "the Carolina word for the same meat; pulled pork is what it is called when the menu speaks to the rest of the country.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "barbecue-postcards",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "barbecue postcards",
   "as": "the word as a card caption, which is how a business told a stranger what it sold.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "cannibal-pig-sign",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "the pig that serves itself",
   "as": "the word most of these signs spell Bar-B-Q, because the hyphens fit a pylon better.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "political-barbecue-prints",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Going the whole hog — the 1830s barbecue lithographs",
   "as": "the word a bystander in the 1834 print says South Carolina uses, while Massachusetts says roasting.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "roadside-barbecue-signs",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "roadside barbecue signs",
   "as": "the word, spelled Bar-B-Q, because it fits a tall cabinet.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "how-to-order",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "How to order",
   "as": "the word itself, which here is a noun for pork.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ]
}