Kebab

Kebab (pronounced kuh-bob or khe-bab)

(1) A dish consisting of small pieces of meat, tomatoes, onions, etc, threaded onto skewers and grilled, generally over char-coal (in this classic skewered form also called the shish kebab); the most common short form is ‘bab.

(2) In Australia, a hand-held dish consisting of pieces of meat roasted on an upright skewer mixed with fresh vegetables and sauces and rolled up in a round piece of unleavened bread; vegetarian kebabs are also sold.

(3) To roast in the style of a kebab.

(4) In slang, to stab or skewer (something or someone).

(5) In Indian English use, roast meat.

(6) Colloquially and metonymically, as “the kebab”, a shop or restaurant which sells kebabs (although the technically incorrect genitive singular form kebaba is used in some places).

(7) In chemistry, the outward growing portions of a shish kebab structure.

(8) In slang as an offensive, ethnic slur, a person of Middle Eastern, or North African descent (applied by appearance and usually with the implication the subject is a Muslim and, in Germany, Turkish).

(9) In vulgar slang (mostly working-class UK), the vulva.

(10) In computing, as kebab menu (also called the three (vertical) dots menu), a convention in the design of graphical user interfaces which appears as an icon used to open a menu with additional options, often for configuration or utility purposes.  The icon most often appears at the top-right or (less commonly) the top-left of the screen or window.  It is distinguished form the “meatball menu” which uses three horizontal dots.

1665-1675: From the Arabic كَبَاب‎ (kabāb) (roast or fried meat), ultimately from the Proto-Semitic kabab- (to burn, to roast).  The word entered English under the Raj, via Urdu, Persian, Hindi and the Turkish kebap and the spellings found around the world include kabob kebob cabob kabaab, kabob, kebap, kabab & kebob.  The use of kebab as an ethnic slur directed at Muslims has, in the phrase “remove kebab” become a staple of the alt-right, great-replacement conspiracy theorists, white supremacists and other malcontents.  It became well-known in the mid-1990s because of the phonetic association with the Serbian Nationalist song of ethnic cleansing, Караџићу, води Србе своје (romanized as Karadžiću, vodi Srbe svoje which translates as “Karadžić, Lead Your Serbs)), a reference to the Bosnian Serb political leader Dr Radovan Karadžić (b 1945), once known (and even celebrated) for his poetry and now serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.  Kebab is a noun (used usually in the plural) & verb, kebabbing & kebabbed are verbs; the noun plural is kebabs.

Noted kebabs

Some linguistically contradictory but delicious vegetarian shish kebabs.

The classic shish kebab was made by skewering (vaguely cuboid) chunks of grilled meat.  Associated with many Mediterranean cuisines, it’s essentially the same dish as the shashlik and khorovats, found in the Caucasus.  Traditionally, reflecting the geographical origin, shish kebab were made with lamb but have also long been made with various kinds of meat, poultry, or fish.  In Türkiye, shish kebabs are accompanied by vegetables but these grilled separately and sit on their own skewer (or sometimes on a side-plate).  In the barbaric West, the meat and vegetable chunks are usually on the same skewer and this sometimes includes pineapple, something said to appall the Turks.  Shish was from the Turkish şiş (skewer), from the Ottoman Turkish شیش‎ (şiş) (swollen) and related to the verb şişmek, cognate with Old Turkic šïš.

A plate of chapli kebabs.

The chapli kebab (چپلي کباب in Pashto) was a Pashtun-style minced-meat dish, made usually with ground beef, mutton, lamb or chicken, spiced and formed into the shape of a patty.  The origins of the dish lie in the old North-West Frontier of the Raj (the area around Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in modern-day northern Pakistan).  The cuisine, adapted with local variations and dietary rules, is popular throughout South Asia and West Asia and food critics note that the further it is from Peshawar, the more complex and elaborate are the alterations and aditions compared to the simple original.  Chapli Kababs can be served and eaten hot with naan or as a bun kebab.  Chapli is thought to be from the Pashto word chaprikh, chapdikh & chapleet (flat), thus the use for the kebab with a light, round and flattened texture.  A more amusing theory suggests the dish is named after the chappal (sandals), the implication being one’s meal looks as if it has been flattened by a man wearing a sandal.  It’s fine folk lore but humorless etymologists prefer to think of Chapli as a shortened version of chapleet.

Doner kebab in the Berlin style.

The doner kebab is a certain type of kebab, made with meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie which is almost always in public view.  Seasoned meat stacked in the shape of an inverted cone is turned slowly on the rotisserie, the heat coming from vertical cooking elements immediately adjacent.  To prepare a doner kebab, the operator uses a knife to slice thin shavings from the cooked, outer layer of the rotating meat.  This method of cooking, invented in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1800s has been adopted in many countries.  In Australia, a kebab is a hand-held dish consisting of pieces of meat roasted on an upright skewer mixed with fresh vegetables and sauces and rolled up in a round piece of unleavened bread; vegetarian kebabs are also sold.  The modern sandwich variant of döner kebab was first seen in the 1960s in shops in West Berlin operated by Turkish immigrants and quickly became popular to the point where it is now an accepted part of German cuisine and often ordered in the short form “doner”.  The noun, verb & adjective döner was from the Ottoman Turkish دونر‎ (döner) (to turn round; spinning; to rotate), from dönmek (to turn).

Mural of Lindsay Lohan in hijab (an al-amira) with Australian style kebab, Melbourne, Australia.