A delicatessen is a shop that sells high-quality cheeses, salads, cooked meats, and other fine ready-to-eat food. The name began as a German word for those delicacies themselves — the foods — and English first used it that way. The shop sense is later: people said delicatessen shop or delicatessen store so often that the extra word dropped away, and delicatessen came to mean the place. That is still the usual dictionary meaning now. In everyday speech, especially in American English, the short form deli has largely taken over for the shop; delicatessen can sound a little fuller or more old-fashioned, or it can still name a grander counter of fine foods. You may see it shortened on signs.