Delicatessen
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Delicatessen is a term meaning "delicacies" or "fine foods". In English, "delicatessen" originally meant only this specially prepared food. In time, the delicatessen store where this food was sold came to be called a delicatessen, and in this sense is often abbreviated to deli.
Etymology
Delicatessen is a German loanword that first appeared in English in 1889; it is the plural form of Delikatesse. In German, it was originally a French loanword, délicatesse, meaning "delicious things (to eat)". The root word is the Latin adjective delicatus, meaning "giving pleasure, delightful, pleasing".
The modern German version is spelled Delikatessen, which may have helped support the alternative popular etymology that the -essen part of the word derives from the German verb essen (Template:Lang-en), or the noun das Essen (Template:Lang-en). This would imply that the word is a compound of the German words delikat (Template:Lang-en; nominative case) and Essen.
See also
