This week’s theme
Words derived from body parts

This week’s words
visceral
blood-and-guts
hamstring
chopped liver
heart-whole

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(CHOPT LIV-uhr)

MEANING:

noun: Something or someone treated as unimportant.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Yiddish gehakte leber (chopped liver). Earliest documented use: 1947.

NOTES:

The term is often heard in the rhetorical form, protesting one’s treatment as not worthy of being noticed: “What am I, chopped liver?” It was popularized by Jewish comedians in the Borscht Belt of the Catskill Mountains in New York. Literally speaking, chopped liver is a traditional dish made from a calf or chicken liver. Since it’s offered as a side dish or appetizer, and is made from inexpensive organ meat, the term began to be used metaphorically.

USAGE:

“[Barry Diller] says, ‘Now, I wasn’t chopped liver, I was the chairman of Paramount at thirty-three.’”
Larissa MacFarquhar; The Huntress; The New Yorker; Sep 25, 2006.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: