pastrami
/pæˈstɹɑːmi/
"pastrami" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pastrami” is uncommon English (frequency #58,269 among 46,516 “P” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #58,269
- frequency rank, English
- 46,516
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A seasoned smoked cut of beef, traditionally made from a navel cut.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pastrami |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /pæˈstɹɑːmi/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #58,269 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pastrami” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
pastrami is uncommon English at frequency #58,269 among 46,516 “P” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /pæˈstɹɑːmi/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A seasoned smoked cut of beef, traditionally made from a navel cut.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for pastrami in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Yiddish פּאַסטראַמע (pastrame), from Romanian pastramă, from Ottoman Turkish باصدرمه (modern Turkish pastırma), a variation of bastırma (“dried meat”), from root bas- (“to press”). It is sometimes claimed that the origin of the Turkish word is… The correct English form is pastrami, spelled P-A-S-T-R-A-M-I.
Definition
- 1A seasoned smoked cut of beef, traditionally made from a navel cut.
Etymology
Borrowed from Yiddish פּאַסטראַמע (pastrame), from Romanian pastramă, from Ottoman Turkish باصدرمه (modern Turkish pastırma), a variation of bastırma (“dried meat”), from root bas- (“to press”). It is sometimes claimed that the origin of the Turkish word is Greek παστώνω (pastóno, “I salt”), from Ancient Greek παστός (pastós, “sprinkled with salt, salted”). The English spelling ending in -mi is probably from the influence of salami.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “pastrami”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-A-S-T-R-A-M-I - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /pæˈstɹɑːmi/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.