barbecue is the only acceptable spelling in serious writing. Any journalist or other formal user of English who believes that the word is spelled barbeque or, worse still, bar-b-q is not ready for unsupervised employment.
Incidentally, a barbecue is a framework of sticks. You can cook stuff on such a structure; but the first use in English, way back in 1697, was to a barbecue bed.
[We] lay there all night, upon our Borbecu's, or frames of Sticks, raised about 3 foot from the Ground
- William Dampier A New Voyage Round the World
Now I must dash as I'm spending the afternoon at a BB-queue.
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Hopefully les prawns d'antan are not on the barbie, because they can make you really sick.
ReplyDeleteIn the Antipodes, we find that if you shorten the names of things it simplifies spelling issues enormously.
ps That title makes me laugh out loud every time I read it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I realise that simplifying something enormously is, well, impossible. Extremely difficult at best. My apologies, and I blame it on the beaujolais.
Ah, summertime. Bees are busy, flowers in full bloom, and the air is filled with the smell of roasting flesh, accelerants and smoking charcoal briquettes. Mmm, lovely.
ReplyDeleteI can't share your liking of Troublesome Words; I found it full of unsupported assertions. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage is more my speed.
ReplyDelete