pastrami

[ puh-strah-mee ]

noun

1. a brisket of beef that has been cured in a mixture of garlic, peppercorns, sugar, coriander seeds, etc., then smoked before cooking.

pastrami

/ pəˈstrɑːmɪ /

noun

1. highly seasoned smoked beef, esp prepared from a shoulder cut

Word History and Origins

Origin of pastrami¹

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of pastrami¹

from Yiddish, from Romanian pastramǎ, from pǎstra to preserve

Example Sentences

Lunch at his Café Hitchcock included pastrami on rye, made with his house-dried beef.

From Washington Post

Regardless how your morning goes, you can usually still have a pastrami sandwich in the afternoon.

From Outside Online

It was conducted around a platter of pastrami sandwiches cut into quarters.

From The Daily Beast

Next to the sign in the window that boasts “the best pastrami west of New York” another reads “free speech zone.”

From The Daily Beast

But if you like pastrami—or, in my case, turkey pastrami—this is your spot.

From The Daily Beast

Samuel P. Jacobs on some new efforts to preserve pastrami and matzoh ball soup for future noshers.

From The Daily Beast