Hi,
This might be an unusual expression and I have no idea about its clear meaning. Could you help me out with it?
Could I guess ‘eat someone’s liver’ suggests ‘teat someone’s courage’? We have an expression ‘Kimodameshi’ (literally ‘liver test’) in Japanese meaning test of one’s courage but maybe it’s irrelevant.
Thank you!
Haihao
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‘Eat your liver’ means roughly ‘grin and bear it’, ‘eat your heart out’, ‘suffer silently’ or something to that effect. Other members may come up with variants for you.
(PS: He yawned deliciously, according to Ms Google.)
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Thank you very much, Mr Micawber! Now I got the meaning for it. ‘Kimodameshi’ was irrelevant and ‘yawned deliriously’ a terrible typo. 
Haihao
Haihao, most children hate liver, even though it is nutritious for them. A typical scene in an American household would be that the mother serves the liver at the dinner table, and the child angrily refuses to eat it. There will be a standoff, with the child stubbornly refusing to eat the liver, and the parents telling him of the punishment he’ll get, and the privileges he’ll lose, if he does not eat his dinner. It’s a power struggle between the parents and the child. When I read that Captain Black has told someone to “eat his liver”, I picture the end of the power struggle, in which Mom and Dad win, and the child realizes he has no choice but to eat the his disgusting dinner or be punished.
Thank you so much, Jamie, and so interesting a background story about the liver! I am sure I will then never forget it!
Although we don’t have a similar idiom but the ‘liver eating fight’ is almost the same here in Japan. I could still remember those power struggles I had with my parents for eating liver, green pepper, etc., though I won more often than lost them.
Thanks again!
Haihao
My parents were strict, tough and well coordinated. It was impossible to lose the liver battle with them.
The spinach battles ended when my mother started serving it raw as salads, rather than creamed and cooked.
Similarly, there was never a fight about green pepper, because it was always raw, cool and delicious.
Oh, yes, you reminded me of spinach, another big problem between my parents and me. Maybe because my parents are a little old fashioned they seldom let me eat spinach really raw as salads (Japanese tradition is to make it half-cooked). But now I am free to eat whatever I like!
Hi Jamie,
Don’t you think it’s sexist to write ‘he’ in this context?
All the best
EU
Just a digression but my English teacher taught me (when I was a child) that I should refer some English words to she but not he (other than it), such as ship, country, etc. (an opposite case to the above one, though)
My problem is, living at this antisexist/antifeminist age (quite confusing, right?), I still feel awkward to refer a ship to ‘she/he’ or ‘he/she’ or my homeland to ‘my motherland/fatherland’ or ‘my fatherland/motherland’. Could you shed some light on it?
I’m sure you’re perfectly aware of the English rule for generic pronouns.
Anyway, I would have three choices in this situation:
Go with traditional English grammar rules and use the pronoun “he” to refer to “any person”. Most people don’t mind this, but but feminists who have some kind of mental problem get upset about it. It’s not worth listening to these people, because they get upset even about Jesus being referred to as “he”, even though he actually was a man!
Go the idiotic feminist way from the 1960s and write “he/she”, which is basically “he” and “she” separated by a hiccup, or write “s/he”, which simply spells “she”. This is sloppy writing, and causes problems in other part of the sentence.
Do what feminists often do and mix the pronouns, generally using “she” for well-behaved children and “he” for badly behaved children.