Cold Cuts
Deli meat
Lunch meat
Sandwich meat
Sliced Meat
It can be simple like sliced ham or roast beef. Or more exotic like liverwurst, salami, or pickle loaf. There’s at least 10 varieties of sandwich meat at the grocery store.
What does your family call this heavily salted delight?
Cold Cuts - this is what I call it and know it as
Deli meat - This is a reasonable alternative, but also refers to the meats before slicing.
Lunch meat - This is some cheap baloney like substitute. Also called lunchen meat
Sandwich meat - see the above
Sliced Meat - undefined, could be a carved dinner meat, or Deli slices.
Would “sandwich meat” also include something like ham salad or chicken salad?
I usually say “deli meat” if I’m talking about the flesh of a specific animal - roast beef, turkey, ham and so on. Ground up and ‘loafed meats’ like bologna, pickle and pimento or olive loaf are “lunch meat”
I grew up in Oregon in the 50’s and 60’s, and we always called it lunch meat. That usually referred to relatively common cheap stuff like bologna or ham loaf or something. We never got commercially sliced real meat like turkey, ham or roast beef, my mother just cooked it and sliced it (not thinly) herself if there was enough left over for sandwiches. Side note: for many of those years my father worked in the office of a meat-packing plant, so we were never short of real meat in the house.
Lunch meat in aggregate, although in the (western PA) household where I grew up we usually had more than one variety on hand, called them by their proper names.
Lebanon Bologna!
Chipped Ham!
Pickle and Pimento Loaf!
Braunschweiger (actually never much cared for that one)!
Mostly not readily available in my current location, and I’m supposed to stay away from cured meats anyway. Dang.