I probably say “deli meat” most often, but I voted “cold cuts,” since that’s what I remember most commonly using growing up.
We call sliced ham ‘ham’, roast beef ‘roast beef’, liverwurst ‘liverwurst’ or ‘Braunschweiger’, salami ‘salami’, and pickle loaf ‘pickle loaf’.
In aggregate, I guess we call them ‘lunch meat’.
From SoCal.
I never called them anything but “cold cuts.”
I voted other, meaning, “all of the above.”
I’m pretty sure as I grew up we always called it lunch meat, unless specifying ham or bologna or whatever. And that’s how we continue to refer to it.
Spent my formative years in Baltimore county.
Always lunch meat, both in my Southern Merlin youth and in Texas.
Same here; I voted “other”. I do refere to it as “lunch meat” on my shopping list as I don’t necessarily know what I’ll be in the mood for when I get to the store.
I think I kind of use all those terms.
As a child, my Wife called it “Wiggly meat” and we use that term
“Deli meat” we use to refer to sliced meat bought from the deli by the pound.
I’d refer to the specific meat product - if I were to use a collective, it’d be charcuterie, although that’s slightly more encompassing than the list in the OP.
‘Cold cuts’ or ‘stuff from the deli’, not ‘deli meats’.
Midlantic - Northeast
ETA: I’m in South Africa.
Minnesotan -
Lunch meat is any packaged meat at the store used for sandwiches. Same if I buy it from the deli. If it’s leftover meat (roast, ham, chicken, etc) we call it whatever meat it is. Cold cuts sounds like a 50s phrase to me.
I use all those terms interchangeably, but I’m probably most likely to say “deli meat” as in, “the meat you get from the deli”, when I’m making a grocery list for example.
I don’y know, both “lunch meat” and “sandwich meat” sound so… logistical. It’s names you see on a checklist, not a menu. Not what I’d call appetizing. “Cold cuts” at least has alliteration going for it
Do you know what we typically see as sliced lunch meat? In some modern delis it does get pretty extensive but Americans tend to think of the basics, bologna, salami, ham, roast beef, turkey, and cheeses. These are available freshly sliced or pre-packaged.
Would South Africans have a term for this subset of charcuterie? It’s sausages, cured meat (predominantly ham), cooked meat like turkey and roast beef, and cheeses, specifically intended for slicing, and mostly used on sandwiches.
“Deli” or “cold cuts”. Interchangeably.
Yes, we have exactly the same types of thing.
They’d be called “cold cuts” (except would not include the cheeses), but I don’t use the term myself.
Lunch meat or maybe sometimes cold cuts. And we were always those strange people as likely to heat/fry them as not.
I’ve lived in California all my life. I call it “lunch meat” most of the time, or occasionally “deli meat.”