a wordpulled pork

Pork cooked slowly over coals or in a cooker until it comes off the bone in strands, then taken apart by hand or with forks rather than cut. Outside the Carolinas it is the name of the dish, and the dish is a shoulder — the Boston butt, the upper shoulder, is the cut it almost always means. Inside the Carolinas the meat is called barbecue, and 'pulled' is one answer, with 'chopped' and 'sliced', to how you want it: Memphis pulls by hand; the North Carolina east chops fine; Lexington serves it pulled or lightly chopped, leaving strands.

Pull is Old English pullian, to pluck off or draw out, and pork came in from Old French porc after 1300. Together they name a texture: meat cooked until its connective tissue gives way, which the Wikipedia article puts at an internal temperature of 195 to 205 °F, and taken apart along the grain. The cut the phrase assumes is the shoulder, and the shoulder's upper half is the Boston butt, named for the New England barrels, called butts, that pork was packed in; the name is in print by 1915. The Carolinas had the thing before the phrase. The east chopped its whole hog with cleavers; Lexington chopped or sliced its shoulders; Memphis built its sandwich on shoulder pulled by hand, not chopped with a blade. Ed Mitchell of Wilson builds a pulled pork sandwich from a whole hog, shoulder, ham and belly together; the Dukes restaurants of Orangeburg list pulled pork on the buffet; the South Carolina mustard sandwich is described as pulled pork. Inference — a Carolina menu that says pulled pork is speaking to the road; one that says barbecue is speaking to the county. No source consulted dates the compound.