Kabob is the American spelling of kebab: meat cooked on a stick, or in the wider family of grilled and roasted meat dishes that English borrowed from the Middle East. In a US supermarket or backyard, kabobs are often chunks of chicken, beef, or lamb with peppers and onion, cooked over a grill. In Britain, kebab may make people think first of meat sliced from a tall spinning roast and tucked into bread. Though actually those are cousins, not two different foods with two different names; the letters just shifted when the word crossed the Atlantic. English took it from a Middle Eastern word for meat cooked over fire (Persian and Arabic kabāb, Turkish kebap). It is everyday food-word English, not a fancy term.