pastrami
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of pastrami
1935–40; < Yiddish pastrame < Romanian pastramă pressed, cured meat; a Balkanism of uncertain origin (compare Modern Greek pastramâs, Serbo-Croatian pȁstrma ), perhaps ultimately < Turkish pastιrma, taken as variant of bastιrma, equivalent to bastιr-, causative stem of bas- press, squeeze + -ma verbal noun suffix
Explanation
Pastrami is a thin-sliced kind of sandwich meat you can find at any good deli. You might order a pastrami sandwich on rye bread for lunch every Tuesday. Pastrami is a type of dark, smoked beef that is typically shaved very thin, and piled between sandwich bread, usually rye, and occasionally topped with coleslaw. A great place to sample pastrami is at a traditional Jewish delicatessen — and the word itself comes from the Yiddish pastrame, which is probably rooted in the Turkish basdirma, "dried meat."
Vocabulary lists containing pastrami
English Words Derived from Yiddish
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Mr. Margolick recounts Caesar eating four pastrami sandwiches in one sitting.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025
One day, 65-year-old customer Robert Bihr was working on a pastrami sandwich in the booth next to us and said he’s been coming in since he was 10.
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 24, 2024
The Reuben and hot pastrami sandwiches will warm up diners from the inside.
From Seattle Times • Nov. 6, 2023
They’ve recently embraced a unique kind of street style — one that’s emblazoned with logos of famous delicatessens and their most popular offerings, like knishes, pastrami, pickles and bagels.
From Salon • Oct. 8, 2023
My foster parents think I was starving in Cuba, and so they like to take me to this restaurant called Wolfie’s, where we eat enormous pastrami sandwiches and bowls of matzoh ball soup.
From "Across So Many Seas" by Ruth Behar
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
