Basically, if you say the word barbeque in the South, you're talking about pulled pork or any kind of meat that's cooked in a pit in the ground. We take barbeque really seriously--different ways of cooking it, different types of sauce (usually vinegar-, ketchup-, or mustard-based), depending on where you are. We have huge competitions for it and build our summers around it. So you really don't want to use that word unless you're specifically talking about barbeque as a food you can eat. You wouldn't want to use it to refer to just grilling something, because we don't use the word that way here. And you definitely wouldn't want to say "I'm going to a barbeque!" if you're really just going to a cook-out where people are grilling something but there isn't going to be any actual barbeque. Basically, if you use the word barbeque, people are going to expect barbeque and barbeque sauce, and probably cole slaw and baked beans or something. And because we love it so much, we'd get majorly disappointed if that weren't provided.

A quote: "Southern barbeque is the closet thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines and cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbeque changes." Truth. It's completely different in, say, Kentucky than it is from the Carolinas or the Deep South. It's a cultural institution!