liver
Plurallivers
Plurallivers
- 1The organ of an animal, prepared and eaten as food.
The butcher sliced fresh liver for the customer.
Calf's liver is often served lightly fried with herbs.
Note
Kitchen English both counts this word and leaves it uncounted. You fry up some chicken livers, but you don't like chicken liver. The plural treats the organs as separate pieces. The bare singular names the food as a kind, which is how people refuse it: a character in Philippa Gregory's Fallen Skies (1993) has "rocked the boat" by "refusing to eat liver." The animal usually comes first, as in goose liver or calf's liver.
- 2A large organ of the body that stores and processes nutrients, breaks down toxins, and makes bile; in all, it carries out thousands of biochemical reactions.
Like a chemical plant that processes incoming supplies while filtering out waste.
The liver filters toxins from the bloodstream around the clock.
Surgeons removed part of the patient's liver during the operation.
Note
The organ's name is old and earthy. It comes from Old English lifer, which traces back to a root meaning "to smear, stick", itself from one meaning "to be slimy". In medical English it often works as a modifier, as in liver transplant. It is a count noun when individual organs are meant, as with donated livers. The cut of meat and the color words all borrow their sense from this one.
- 3A dark brown color, tinted with red and gray, resembling the color of cooked liver.
The decorator mixed a rich liver for the study's paneling.
Under the lamp, the curtains shaded from brown into a deep liver.
- 4Of a dark brown color, tinted with red and gray, like that of liver.
The spaniel's liver markings made it easy to spot in the field.
She admired the liver leather of the antique armchair.
Note
Coat color is where this adjective earns its keep. Rawdon Briggs Lee records a Laverack-bred puppy that was "liver and white," and the pairing with white is the natural pattern. The word does not compare, so nothing is "more liver." That keeps it apart from the comparative of live, which happens to share its spelling.
- 5USLY-vur/ˈlaɪvɚ/UKLY-vuh/ˈlaɪvə/Comparative form of live. Rare; more live is the usual form.
Seeing things on a big screen somehow makes them seem liver.
Note
A comparative built the regular way, live plus -er, where more live is the usual choice. It suits the senses of live that can be graded, such as more vivid or more energized. A big screen makes things "seem liver," and Adam F's "Stand Clear" (2001) uses it in a boast of being more live than any video recording. On the page it collides with the organ, so more live is clearer in writing.
- 6A person who lives, usually in some specified manner.
He was a high liver who spent every penny on pleasure.
Try if life be worth the liver's care.
1718, Mat[thew] Prior, “Solomon on the Vanity of the World. A Poem in Three Books.”Note
A separate word from the organ: Middle English lyvere, simply live plus -er. It shares nothing with the bodily organ except its spelling. It usually needs an adjective in front, and the adjective carries the judgment. Florio's Montaigne has "a dissolute liver," Burton "a wicked liver," and Wordsworth "grave Livers" in Scotland. Since readers think of the organ first, keep that modifier in place.
- 7A resident of a particular place or kind of place, such as the country or an island.
She became a true island liver, adapting to the slow pace of life there.
One, John Powle, a Liver on Sasquehanna River.
1747, Col. Rec. Pennsylv., VSimilardweller, inhabitant, resident, denizen
Note
The place is attached with a preposition. The Pennsylvania colonial records of 1747 name John Powle "a Liver on Sasquehanna River," and D. G. Mitchell in 1863 finds "no liver in the country so practical." The pattern is liver followed by on or in and a place. In current prose, inhabitant, dweller or resident does this job without the ambiguity.
- 8A person who is currently alive; one of the living.
He counted himself a fortunate liver after surviving the shipwreck.
When as the wandring Scots and Picthts King Marius had subdude, He gave the Liuers dwellings.
1592, Alb. Eng., WarnerSimilarsurvivor
Note
Here no manner of living is implied, only being alive at all. The use belongs to the late sixteenth century. Warner (1592) writes of a king who "gave the Liuers dwellings," and Greene's Alphonsus (1599) addresses a heaven that sees "the secret of each livers heart." For this idea, current English says the living. Livers alone would be heard as organs.
- 9Any of several compounds, especially sulfides, whose color was thought to be like that of liver.
Note
This comes from an older chemistry that named compounds, mostly sulfides, after the color they seemed to share with the organ. It appears in an of-phrase naming the substance, as in liver of antimony. Such preparations were dosed to horses as well as handled at the bench. The term is obsolete. In older texts, read it as the name of a compound, never as the organ itself.
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Origins
From Middle English lyver, from Old English lifer ("liver"), going back through Proto-Germanic *librō to a Proto-Indo-European root *leyp- ("to smear, stick"). It is cognate with Dutch lever, German Leber, and the Scandinavian lever, and is related to live.
From Middle English lyvere, formed from the verb live plus the suffix -er.
Formed from live (adjective) plus the suffix -(e)r.