Also bocan. [Boucan is the French spelling (= bukaṅ·) 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 = mukeṅ·): 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, trans. 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 Brazilwood, 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 sb. 5.
1857. Illustr. Lond. News, 28 March. The Bocan or building used [in West Indies] for drying and preparing … coffee.
3. Boucaned meat. [prop. Fr.]
1860–5. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., XII. xii. Bucaniers, desperate naval gentlemen living on boucan or hung beef.
