Like why does it mean cowardly
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Livered it self offers the meaning of coward. Milk is known white and putity. Milk here isused to stress the purity of cowardness.
Source(s): meaning//
It’s a historical myth that cowards had white/yellow livers.
Check out Shakespeare:
=quote=
How many cowards whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk,
– The Merchant of Venice, Act , Scene
=unquote=
From “Lily-livered”
Shakespeare appears to have coined the phrase and, in Macbeth, , when the Bard needed to emphasize the fear and cowardice of a servant who was bringing the king news of a military attack, he described the servant as ‘a white-faced loon’ and gave Macbeth the line:
Go pricke thy face, and over-red thy feare, Thou Lilly-liver’d Boy.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lily-livered.ht…
Originally “white-livered”, a pale liver believed to be low in bile and the person lacking in vigour and courage.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/white-livered