Chopped liver

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:45 PM +0100 8/9/02, Michael Quinion wrote:
>Here's one for you to chew on. Subscribers have suddenly started to
>ask me about the origins of "what am I, chopped liver?". (Could a
>quiz have featured it recently?) I've done the obvious research, but
>can't find even the slightest clue as to why this odd expression
>could have come about. Any ideas, anyone?
>
Michael,

Just a note to observe that this rhetorical question plays off a more
widely distributed negative polarity item "(not) to be chopped
liver", as in the expression "That's not chopped liver".  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), recognized at least
since Pott (1859), who analyzed these as containing an implicit
"nicht einmal das", i.e. 'not even...' . In my _Natural History of
Negation_ (U. of Chicago Press, 1989, p. 452), I note that since
Pott, "linguists have recognized this function of positive
expressions denoting small or negligible quantities, often
incorporating a sense of scorn or ridicule", with examples ranging
from Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, English, Slavic, and various
non-Indo-European languages, and 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').  So the question then comes down to why it is that
chopped liver was so negatively valued, although the appearance of
cherrystones and lobsters among the list of minimizers does suggest
some degree of contextual variation and de-gustibus-driven
subjectivity in these assessments of virtual worthlessness.  I'd go
with "what am I, fried liver?" or perhaps "lima beans?", but I'm
partial to a nice mound of chopped chicken liver with just the right
amount of shmalz (not to mention pate de campagne) myself.

larry