▪ I. ‖ buˈccan, buˈcan, bouˈcan, n.
Also bocan.
[Boucan is the French spelling (= bukɑ̃) of a Tupi or allied Brazilian word, conveyed by Europeans in the 16th c. to Guiana and the West Indies, and hence often set down as Carib, Haitian, etc. The modern Tupi form is mocaém (Pg. moquém = (muˈkɛ̃)): the Carib names were ioualla (youlla), anaké, the Haitian barbacóa. (E. B. Tylor.)]
1. A native South American name for a wooden framework or hurdle on which meat was roasted or smoked over a fire.
| 1611 E. Aston tr. De Lery Hist. Amer. [The wooden grating set up on four forked posts] which in their language they call a boucan. 1751 Chambers Cycl., Buccaneers, or Bucaneers, a term..properly used for a kind of savages, who prepare their meat on a grate, or hurdle made of Brazil-wood, placed in the smoke, at a good height from the fire, and called buccan. 1852 E. Warburton Darien II. 34 The buccaneers proceeded to prepare their dinner. The..flesh was separated from the bones, cut into long strips, and laid upon the boucan. 1864 Webster, Buccan, a grating or hurdle made of sticks. 1872 J. H. Trumbull Proc. Amer. Philol. Assoc. 13 The Virginia barbacue and the French boucan (dried meat)..were all derived from names of the high wooden gridiron or scaffolding on which Indians dried, smoked, or broiled their meats. This grill was called boucan by the Brazilians. |
2. (in form bocan) = barbecue n. 5.
| 1857 Illustr. Lond. News 28 Mar., The Bocan or building used [in West Indies] for drying and preparing..coffee. |
3. Boucaned meat. [prop. Fr.]
| 1860–65 Carlyle Fredk. Gt. xii. xii, Bucaniers, desperate naval gentlemen living on boucan or hung beef. |
▪ II. ‖ ˈbuccan, v.
Also boucane, bucan.
[a. F. boucane-r, f. boucan: see prec.]
trans. To expose (meat) to the action of fire and smoke upon a boucan or barbecue; to barbecue. Hence ˈbuccaned ppl. a., ˈbuccaning vbl. n. (More usually spelt like the French.)
| 1600 tr. Laudonnière's Hist. de la Floride (1586) in Hakluyt III. 307 They eate all their meate broyled on the coales and dressed in the smoake, which in their language they call Boucaned. 1761 Ann. Reg., Charac. III. 1/2 These new settlers obtained the name of Buccaneers from their custom of buccanning their beef. 1827 Edin. Rev. XLV. 407 Instead of always boucaning their meats..they now often used salt. 1865 Tylor Early Hist. Man. 261 The art of bucaning or barbecuing practised by the Americans. 1865 Morning Star 14 Feb., The very name buccaneer is derived..from the (‘jerked’) beef, which was also called ‘boucaned’ meat. |