Chopped Liver - Chopped Liver As An Expression

Chopped Liver As An Expression

Since eating chopped liver may not be appreciated by everyone, the Jewish English expression "What am I, chopped liver?", signifies frustration or anger at being ignored on a social level.

An alternative explanation for the etymology of the "What am I, chopped liver?" expression is that chopped liver was traditionally served as a side dish rather than a main course. The phrase, therefore may have originally meant to express a feeling of being overlooked, as a "side dish."

A similar reference aired in 1963 on The Dick Van Dyke Show on an episode titled "Jilting the Jilter" at the Internet Movie Database. Sally Rogers, played by Rose Marie, is asked by a "second-rate comedian" Fred White, played by Guy Marks, "What do you think you are your majesty, chopped chicken liver?"

Read more about this topic:  Chopped Liver

Famous quotes containing the words chopped, liver and/or expression:

    History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts: it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called “eternal.” What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.
    Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)

    The menu was stewed liver and rice, fricassee of bones, and shredded dog biscuit. The dinner was greatly appreciated; the guests ate until they could eat no more, and Elisha Dyer’s dachshund so overtaxed its capacities that it fell unconscious by its plate and had to be carried home.
    —For the State of Rhode Island, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)