A pastrami on rye sandwich. A sandwich, piled high with meat, served with pickles and mustard.
4 February 2022
Pastrami is cured beef, usually served thinly sliced. In extended use the word can be used, especially as an adjective (e.g., pastrami salmon), to refer to a variety of cured meats, not just beef.
Pastrami began to appear in American markets, in particular Jewish markets, in the late nineteenth century. The word was introduced into English from the Yiddish pastrame. That word comes from the Romanian pastramă (pressed and preserved meat), which in turn comes from the Ottoman Turkish baṣdurma (something pressed down).
In nineteenth-century writing, in particular travel narratives, one will occasionally come across other, non-Anglicized forms of the word, notably pastourma, pasdirma, pastruma, and pastrama. But these older uses are invariably presented as foreign terms in an English text. For instance, there is this from Anthony Groves’s 1832 Journal of a Residence at Bagdad:
When dear Mr. Pfander left us, we made him some sausages, called in this country pastourma.
And there is this from an 1846 English translation of Evliya Çelebi’s Narrative of Travels in Europe Asia, and Africa, in the Seventeenth Century:
The Merchants of dried salted beef (Tajirání Pasdirma) four hundred men, with an hundred shops. Their shops are outside the Wooden gate at Galata and Top-khánah and every where else. They sell dried salted beef, and adorn their shops with hams and slices of such kinds of meats, and cry to the beholders, “Take Pasdirma.”
The earliest fully Anglicized use of pastrami that I know of appears in an 1899 advertisement for a Jewish butcher in Richmond, Virginia:
S. SPECTOR,
1717 E. Main St., Richmond, Va.,
Wholesale and Retail Dealer in
FRESH BEEF AND SMOKED MEATS
Of All Kinds,
Sausages, Bolognas, Corned Beef, Corned Tongues,
Smoked Beef, Smoked Tongues,
Smoked Shoulders, Salami, Pastrami,
Rendered Beef Fat, &c.
Older dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster’s Third New International (1961) and American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition (2000), often contain incorrect etymologies for pastrami. These incorrect origins follow two typical paths. One traces the Yiddish word from Hungarian, the other from Latin. There is no evidence for either of these; they are just guesses. One should always be careful when using older dictionaries as they don’t reflect current scholarship. Date, however, can be an uncertain guide; some older dictionaries get it right while newer ones get it wrong. For instance, the American Heritage third (1996) had the correct Yiddish < Romanian etymology, only to promulgate the incorrect Yiddish < Romanian < Latin etymology four years later in the fourth edition. The error was corrected in the fifth (2011).
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. pastrami, n.
Efendi, Evliya (Evliya Çelebi). Narrative of Travels in Europe Asia, and Africa, in the Seventeenth Century. von Hammer, Joseph, trans. London: William H. Allen, 1846, 148. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Gold, David L. Studies in Etymology and Etiology. San Vicente del Raspeig: University of Alicante, 2009, 359–69. Digitalia.
Groves, Anthony N. Journal of a Residence at Bagdad. London: James Nisbet, 1832, 250. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
The Jewish South (Richmond, Virginia), 12 May 1899, 1. Library of Congress: Chronicling America, Historic American Newspapers.
Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, s.v. pastrami, n. Accessed 17 Dec. 2021.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2005, s.v. pastrami, n.
Image credit: Charles Haynes, 2005. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.