salad days

plural noun

Synonyms of salad days next

: time of youthful inexperience or indiscretion

my salad days when I was green in judgment—

William Shakespeare

also : an early flourishing period : heyday

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When is someone in their salad days?

A good salad is fresh, crisp, and usually green. Those attributes are often associated (in both vegetables and people) with vitality and immaturity. The first English writer known to use salad days to associate the fresh greenness of salad with the vigor and recklessness of youth was William Shakespeare. In Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra praises Marc Antony's valor and demands that her serving woman do the same. When the servant instead praises her former consort, Caesar, Cleopatra threatens her—until the woman notes that she is only echoing Cleopatra's own effusive past praise of Caesar. Cleopatra's reply marks the first English use of salad days:

"My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
To say as I said then."

Examples of salad days in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web There may be far fewer TV shows being made in Hollywood these days than in the salad days of the peak TV era, but that just means there’s more hustling being done to get writers, producers, directors and actors staffed on a development season that goes on year-round. —

Andrew Wallenstein, Variety, 13 Mar. 2024 Green at center was Kerr’s Get Out of Jail Free card during the team’s salad days. —

Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News, 20 Feb. 2024 Acknowledge that the salad days are long gone, get under the exceptionally punitive luxury tax thresholds, and stock the war chest for the future. —

Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News, 31 Jan. 2024 The internet from this era is the internet of our salad days. —

Kate Knibbs, WIRED, 23 Dec. 2023 The video then cycles through a series of then-and-now pictures and videos of the band in their salad days and a sure-to-be-talked-about sequence in which archival shots of Lennon and Harrison are spliced in aside present-day McCartney and Starr in a recording session. —

Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 3 Nov. 2023 But the Democratic congresswoman from Oakland, an A’s fan since Rickey Henderson’s salad days, is trying to flex her legislative muscles. —

Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY, 12 Aug. 2023 Say goodbye to the salad days of the pandemic, when public cash was flowing like Niagara Falls. —

Staff Reports, cleveland, 10 Aug. 2023 In their salad days, the trio could hold their own on the court, once coming from 12-2 down in the last inning of an Open Division game to pull off a win. —

Don Norcross, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 July 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'salad days.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.