chopped liver
nounEtymology
Calque of Yiddish געהאַקטע לעבער (gehakte leber), from געהאַקטע (gehakte, “chopped”) (compare the verb האַקן (hakn, “to chop”)) + לעבער (leber, “liver”). According to the Hungarian-American lexicographer and linguist Sol Steinmetz (1930–2010), sense 2 (“person or object not worthy of being noticed”) may be from the fact that chopped liver is served as an appetizer or side dish rather than as a main dish.
Definitions
A Jewish pâté-like food, usually spread on bread, made by mincing beef or chicken liver…
A Jewish pâté-like food, usually spread on bread, made by mincing beef or chicken liver and onions which have been broiled or fried in schmaltz (“chicken fat”) together with hard-boiled eggs.
- The French say they are chopped liver experts. But you will decide whether Mrs. Weinberg, her mother, her mother's mother and her mother's mother's mother knew the secret of real chopped liver—long before the French did.
A person or object not worthy of being noticed
A person or object not worthy of being noticed; someone or something insignificant.
- You've been nice enough, but what am I, chopped liver or something?
- Two hundred and eighty million dollars in the Union's welfare fund. That ain't chopped liver.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for chopped liver. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA