Word.ws English Dictionary

barbacoa

/ˌbɑː(ɹ)bəˈkoʊ.ə/

barbacoa noun: meat slow-cooked over an open fire, characteristic of Latin American cuisine.

barbacoa: meat slow-cooked over an open fire, characteristic of Latin American cuisine
Image: Elton Rodriguez, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

barbacoa (uncountable)

  1. Meat slow-cooked over an open fire, characteristic of Latin American cuisine.
    • At first Andablo tried to make barbacoa with cow heads, but something about American beef didn't taste right. "2004 January 16, Mike Sula, “The Cooking Life”, in Chicago Reader

Origin of barbacoa

Borrowed from Spanish barbacoa (whence also barbecue), from Taíno barbakoa (“framework of sticks”), the raised wooden structure the natives used to either sleep on or cure meat. Originally “meal of roasted meat or fish”. Doublet of barbecue and balbacua.

Questions about barbacoa

What does barbacoa mean?
Barbacoa means meat slow-cooked over an open fire, characteristic of Latin American cuisine.
What part of speech is barbacoa?
Barbacoa is a noun.
How do you pronounce barbacoa?
Barbacoa is pronounced /ˌbɑː(ɹ)bəˈkoʊ.ə/.

Words near barbacoa in the dictionary

  1. barbacans
  2. barback
  3. barbacked
  4. barbacking
  5. barbacks
  6. barbacoa
  7. Barbacoan
  8. barbacue
  9. barbacued
  10. barbacueing
  11. barbacues

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barbacoa (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-barbacoa.oga.

Cite this entry: “barbacoa.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barbacoa. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.