[lbo-talk] School Debate: Central Focus

Andy andy274 at gmail.com
Fri Feb 17 09:23:16 PST 2012


On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 12:02 PM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:


> Waitaminit… as the resident vegetarian, that should’ve been my line. Anyway, what’s so wrong about chopped liver? Why is it the stand-in for worthlessness? It’s likely chock full of iron and other good stuff, no?

Some hypotheses (google with 'origin "what am i chopped liver" '):

http://ohr.edu/ask_db/ask_main.php/213/Q3/

As far as I know, the origins of the phrase are not Yiddish; I believe the phrase was originally coined in America. Being that chopped liver was always considered a side dish and not a main course, the phrase is used to express hurt and amazement when a person feels he has been overlooked and treated just like a "side dish."

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/25/magazine/on-language-enough-already-what-am-i-chopped-liver.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

WHAT AM I?

At a chic Washington cocktail party, Elizabeth Drew, author of ''Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America,'' accepted an hors d'oeuvre of chopped liver smeared on a cracker and asked: ''Chopped liver is delicious. Why do people derogate it so? As in the expression, 'What am I, chopped liver?' ''

[...]

This show-biz usage contributed to the treatment of the ethnic culinary delicacy (in Yiddish, gehakte leber) as an object of disdain. It may have also been influenced by its sense in underworld lingo as ''a beaten and scarred person,'' or by the urbanization of the once-rural expression ''That ain't hay.'' Steinmetz speculates: ''Chopped liver is merely an appetizer or side dish, not as important as chicken soup or gefilte fish. Hence it was often used among Jewish comedians in the Borscht Belt as a humorous metaphor for something or someone insignificant.''

-- Andy



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