Word.ws English Dictionary

delicatessen

/ˌdɛlɪkəˈtɛsən/

delicatessen noun: a shop that sells cooked or prepared foods ready for serving.

delicatessen: a shop that sells cooked or prepared foods ready for serving
Image: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

delicatessen (plural delicatessens)

  1. A shop that sells cooked or prepared foods ready for serving.

Noun (2)

delicatessen pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Delicacies; exotic or expensive foods.
    • I shall have Royal Climax sausages every Tuesday and Saturday. Leave your orders early as there is a demand for these delicious delicatessen. J. W. Galloway.1902 April 30, “Local and Personal”, in The Chilliwack Progress, 12th year, number 4 (576 overall), Chilliwack, B.C., →ISSN, →OCLC, page [5], column 1
    • A taxi, after mounting the sidewalk, had finished up with its radiator buried in a pile of delicatessen.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 53

Forms of delicatessen

pluraldelicatessens
alternative formdelikatessen

Origin of delicatessen

First attested 1864. From German Delikatessen, plural of Delikatesse (“delicacy, fine food”), at the time also spelled Delicatesse(n), from French délicatesse, from délicat (“fine”), from Latin delicatus (“alluring”). The sense of store is more recent, originating in ellipsis from the common attributive use, as in delicatessen shop, delicatessen store, etc.

Words formed from delicatessen

Questions about delicatessen

What does delicatessen mean?
Delicatessen means a shop that sells cooked or prepared foods ready for serving.
What part of speech is delicatessen?
Delicatessen is a noun.
How do you pronounce delicatessen?
Delicatessen is pronounced /ˌdɛlɪkəˈtɛsən/.
What is the plural of delicatessen?
The plural of delicatessen is delicatessens.

Words near delicatessen in the dictionary

  1. delicately
  2. delicateness
  3. delicater
  4. delicates
  5. delicatesse
  6. delicatessen
  7. delicatessens
  8. delicatest
  9. delice
  10. deliced
  11. delicence

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: delicatessen (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-delicatessen.wav.

Cite this entry: “delicatessen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/delicatessen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.