Word.ws English Dictionary

chopped liver

Syllables: chopped liv·erUK/ˈt͡ʃɒpt ˌlɪvə/US/ˈt͡ʃɑpt ˌlɪvɚ/

chopped liver noun: a Jewish pâté-like food, usually spread on bread, made by mincing beef or chicken liver and onions which have been broiled or fried in schmaltz (“chicken fat”) together with hard-boiled eggs.

chopped liver: a Jewish pâté-like food, usually spread on bread, made by mincing beef or chicken liver and onions...
Image: Mushki Brichta, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

chopped liver (uncountable)

  1. A Jewish pâté-like food, usually spread on bread, made by mincing beef or chicken liver and onions which have been broiled or fried in schmaltz (“chicken fat”) together with hard-boiled eggs.
    • The French say they are chopped liver experts. But you will decide whether Mrs. Weinberg, her mother, her mother's mother and her mother's mother's mother knew the secret of real chopped liver—long before the French did.1967, The National Jewish Monthly, Washington, D.C.: B’nai B’rith, →OCLC, page 50
    • The traditional meal is a fine example of how to get the most from a chicken: the chicken, which is also the main course, produces the liver and the soup as well as the chicken fat which is essential to the flavor of the matzoh balls, the chopped liver and the grated radish.1974, Molly Finn, Jeri Laber, Cooking for Carefree Weekends, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 81
  2. (humorous, idiomatic, informal) A person or object not worthy of being noticed; someone or something insignificant.
    • You've been nice enough, but what am I, chopped liver or something?1949, Joey Adams, The Curtain Never Falls, New York, N.Y.: F. Fell, →OCLC, page 175
    • Two hundred and eighty million dollars in the Union's welfare fund. That ain't chopped liver.1962 October 23 (first performance), Sidney Kingsley, Night Life: In Three Acts, New York, N.Y.: Dramatists Play Service, published 1966, →OCLC, act 1, page 16

chopped liver meaning in Indonesian and Persian

chopped liver in Indonesian

Jewish pâté-like food
hati cincang

chopped liver in Persian

Jewish pâté-like food
جگر خردشده

Examples of chopped liver in a sentence

  • We had a run on chopped liver that morning, which was one of our biggest sellers.2015 January, Delia Rosen, chapter 2, in Fry Me a Liver, mass market edition, New York, N.Y.: Kensington Books, Kensington Publishing...
  • After all, you weren't exactly chopped liver before!1996, Emma Brookes, chapter 9, in Dead Even, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, →ISBN, page 95:
  • Zaid is especially happy with his friend's visit (you know, the one he keeps telling us is his only real friend ever – I guess we were chopped liver).2003 January 3, Salam Pax [pseudonym; Salam Abdulmunem], “January 2003”, in Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi, 1st...
  • But it really rankled Mets fans when anyone assumed that the Yankees were New York's main baseball team and the Mets were the little brother, the chopped liver, the city's second team.2009, Dana Brand, “Waxing: How the Mets are More Popular than the Yankees”, in The Last Days of Shea: Delight and Despair in the Life of a...

Synonyms of chopped liver

15 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

10 more antonymsFewer antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of chopped liver

Origin of chopped liver

Calque of Yiddish געהאַקטע לעבער (gehakte leber), from געהאַקטע (gehakte, “chopped”) (compare the verb האַקן (hakn, “to chop”)) + לעבער (leber, “liver”). According to the Hungarian-American lexicographer and linguist Sol Steinmetz (1930–2010), sense 2 (“person or object not worthy of being noticed”) may be from the fact that chopped liver is served as an appetizer or side dish rather than as a main dish.

Words formed from chopped liver

Questions about chopped liver

What does chopped liver mean?
Chopped liver means a Jewish pâté-like food, usually spread on bread, made by mincing beef or chicken liver and onions which have been broiled or fried in schmaltz (“chicken fat”) together with hard-boiled eggs.
What is chopped liver in Indonesian?
Chopped liver in Indonesian is hati cincang. See Chopped liver meaning in Indonesian.
How do you use chopped liver in a sentence?
We had a run on chopped liver that morning, which was one of our biggest sellers.
What part of speech is chopped liver?
Chopped liver is a noun.
How do you pronounce chopped liver?
Chopped liver is pronounced /ˈt͡ʃɒpt ˌlɪvə/ (UK).

Words near chopped liver in the dictionary

  1. chopped and changed
  2. chopped and screwed
  3. chopped beef
  4. chopped down
  5. chopped it up
  6. chopped liver
  7. chopped logic
  8. chopped off
  9. chopped out
  10. chopped shyt
  11. chopped up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chopped liver (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-chopped liver.ogg.

Cite this entry: “chopped liver.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chopped_liver. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.