The term white-livered, like lily-livered, can describe someone timid. But an old folk tradition, once common in the South, associates having a white liver or white spots on one’s liver with an insatiable sexual appetite. The terms white-livered widow, or white- livered widder refers to a woman who has a series of husbands who died shortly after they married, presumably because she simply wore them out physically. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “White-Livered”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi, who is this?
This is Cree Harris calling from Indianapolis.
Hi, Cree. Welcome to the show.
Hello, Cree.
So, a few weeks back, I was at my grandmother’s house, and she was telling me about a gentleman down the street. He’s in his 70s or 80s or something like that. And he goes down to the bingo hall and picks up women. Maybe like a week after he went down there, he went to the doctor and said that he was feeling really tired and that he wasn’t feeling himself and just wasn’t feeling well altogether.
So the doctor asked him some follow-up questions, and the gentleman revealed that he had been trying to pick up these women at the bingo hall and was trying to act like he was young again, pretty much.
Okay.
So the doctor said to him, man, you must have picked up one of those white liver women. I didn’t believe it at all, and I told my grandmother, no, he couldn’t have said that. What is a white liver woman?
So I Googled it, and sure enough, a white liver woman is someone with an insatiable sexual appetite. So my question is, where did that term white liver come from and why is it associated with an older woman with an insatiable sexual appetite?
Yeah, well, it’s a very well-attested term and it means exactly what you’re talking about. There’s this longstanding folk belief, especially in the South, that somebody who has a pale liver or a liver with white spots on it is going to be driven to sexual excess.
A male or female, right?
Right.
Right. There’s also a term, there’s a great term, a white-livered widder or a white-livered widow. And this is a woman who marries several men in succession and they all die fairly quickly. And the presumption is that she just wore them out.
That is surprising. I would have never have guessed it.
Yeah, it’s interesting. There’s a long, long tradition. In fact, it goes all the way back to Plato, the notion that the liver is somehow the seat of desire. And there are comparable terms in French and German and Italian as well.
So it’s a long, long, long belief.
But why white liver?
We don’t know, do we?
We don’t know.
The white liver has been credited with other characteristics in the past.
Someone who’s white livered could be a coward.
And you might know it as the variant of lily livered, meaning somebody who just doesn’t have the brass on the backbone to do what needs to be done.
Yeah, I have heard of that one before.
In respect to being a coward, but never on the other side of that.
You’re not likely to find white liver used in this way these days outside of fiction.
It’s just kind of fatal.
Yeah, outside of the South.
It’s gone the way of most of the traditional folklore, which is it’s an area of study.
Perhaps you see it in stories, but you’re not likely to pass it on unremarked upon.
Well, you learn something new every day.
Yeah, is your grandmother from the South, by the way?
She is. She’s from the South. She’s from Mississippi.
Okay, yeah, well, that makes sense.
It’s also a good way to talk about that kind of thing in front of the children, you know.
She has a white liver.
That is very true.
That’s actually been my new term here for the past few weeks.
Well, you may have just popularized it, Crete.
Hey, if you hear it on a TV show, it was all because of me.
There we go.
Yeah, if it comes back into vogue, it was Crete.
All right.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot for calling.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
All right, bye-bye.
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