From Taino 'barbacoa' (a raised wooden framework for smoking meat) via Spanish — the folk etymology 'barbe à queue' (beard to tail) is false.
A method of cooking meat slowly over a wood or charcoal fire; also the apparatus or social event for such cooking.
From Spanish 'barbacoa,' borrowed from Taino 'barbacoa,' which referred to a framework of sticks set upon posts — used for sleeping above the ground, storing food, and smoking or drying meat over a fire. The word originally described the wooden structure, not the cooking method. Spanish colonists adopted it to refer specifically to the technique of slow-cooking meat over such a frame. The folk etymology connecting 'barbecue' to French
The popular story that 'barbecue' comes from French 'barbe à queue' (beard to tail — roasting a whole animal) is completely false. It is a Taino Arawakan word for a raised wooden frame, borrowed by Spanish colonists. The same Taino people gave us 'maize,' 'hammock,' 'canoe,' 'hurricane,' and 'tobacco' — an astonishing linguistic legacy from a people who were virtually destroyed within a generation of contact.