“barbecue: [M17th] This word comes from Spanish barbacoa, perhaps from Arawak (West Indies) barbacoa which was a ‘wooden frame on posts.’ Barbecue is used in space in the phrases barbecue mode and barbecue maneuver describing the rotation of a spacecraft to allow the heat of the sun to fall on all sides.”
Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Mark's Text Terminal 