Barbeque or barbecue? I don’t know about ya’ll but I’ve always preferred BBQ. I guess that makes me a Q man. Southern Living has a great post on the history of the word.
Back in the 18th century, there were almost as many ways to spell barbecue as there were people cooking it: barbacue, barbicu, borbecue. In his diary entry for September 18, 1773, George Washington recorded that he attended, “a Barbicue of my own giving at Accotink.”…But, even that wasn’t economical enough. After World War II, “BBQ” started to be used as a sort of shorthand to save a few more pennies in classified ads, much like FROG (“finished room over garage”) or OBO (“or best offer”). This faux-acronym is one of the few terms in common usage that’s fully capitalized like an acronym but whose letters don’t actually stand for separate words.
via How Do You Spell Barbecue? | Your Hub for Southern Culture.