Chopped liver

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 8/9/02 7:45:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
TheEditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG writes:

> Here's one for you to chew on. Subscribers have suddenly started to
>  ask me about the origins of "what am I, chopped liver?".

I would avoid any deli in which the chopped liver could be described as
something to chew on.

In a message dated 8/9/02 10:32:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time, caman at AMLAW.COM
writes:

>  > I think any 'plebeian' substance can (in principle) be named in such an
>  > expression; perhaps this one has or had an ethnic or other connection
>  > which suited it to some comedian's shtick

I seem to recall that "what do you think I am, chopped liver?" was a Barbra
Streisand line in the movie "Funny Girl".  If so, that would be a source from
which many people could have picked up the expression, particularly since the
movie had what amounted to a shtick in its portrayal of Fanny Brice as a
preincarnation of Streisand.

Note on 'plebian':  I have a pet theory that the word "plebe" originated,
back in Rome under the Tarquins or the early Republic, as an ethnic slur,
used by the Latin-speakers in Rome to denigrate (hmm, that's an interesting
word) those Romans whose native language was Oscan.

In a message dated 8/9/02 10:58:36 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:

> This is
>  clearly related to a much more general tendency to coin "minimizers",
>  i.e. expessions denoting a minimal or negligible substance (where
>  minimality is defined by quantity or value),  <snip>
>  [examples] varying from the culinary domain (=
>  'not a cherrystone/crumb/fava/fig/garlic') to the monetary (= 'not a
>  dinero/red cent/plugged nickel/thin dime/sou), animals and body parts
>  ('not a hair/lobster[!]/sparrow'), to the linguistic (= 'not an
>  accent/iota')

I had always heard that "not an iota of difference" comes from the Byzantine
Empire, referring to one of their longstanding theological street-fights in
which each side's platform incorporated a similar Greek word, the two words
differing only in that one had the letter iota and the other did not.

Is this accurate?  or a rather Classical etymythology?  It seems a little bit
of a stretched coincidence that the letter iota, alleged to be the hot dog of
this dispute, is itself in its lower case form the smallest letter in the
Greek alphabet.

     - Jim Landau