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.

• "You've been nice enough, but what am I, chopped liver or something?"
• "Two hundred and eighty million dollars in the Union's welfare fund. That ain't chopped liver."
• "Well, now, I wouldn't make this change seem like a major overhaul. After all, you weren't exactly chopped liver before! But I did sense that you were deliberately trying to downplay your attractiveness, for whatever reason. Not that you succeeded, of course."
• "God is the father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What about Sarah and Rebecca? What about Leah and Ruth? What are they, chopped liver? All your god respects are the men. Women are nothing to Him."
• "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)."
• "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."
• "Someone had hit the pause button, and I ended up on the waiting list. My beautiful plans had just turned into chopped liver."

• absolute zero
• also-ran
• chopped liver
• cipher
• crumb
• Joe Nobody
• little guy
• minnow
• nebbish
• nobody
• no one
• nothing
• nothingburger
• nonentity
• picayune
• pip-squeak
• pleb
• peon
• prole
• puny
• quidam
• rinky-dink
• shrimp
• wankstain
• zero
• zilch

• baron
• big cheese
• big enchilada
• big gun
• big kahuna
• big man
• big name
• big noise
• big shot
• bigwig
• big wheel
• boss
• grand poobah
• head honcho
• heavy hitter
• heavyweight
• high muckamuck
• high muckety-muck
• king of all one surveys
• king of the castle
• king of the hill
• kingpin
• macher
• mayor
• muckamuck
• muckety muck
• mugwump
• numero uno
• poobah
• rooster
• somebody
• top banana
• top boy
• top cat
• top dog
• top gun
• very important person
• VIP
• wheel