salad days
plural noun
William Shakespeare
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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
Daniel Cassady For Artnews, Robb Report, 26 Apr. 2025
Additionally, the attackers who are more confident about staying, like Embolo and Takumi Minamino, are approaching the end of their salad days.
—Brett Koremenos, The Athletic, 21 Mar. 2025
No Broncos quarterback has logged stats like this since the salad days of Peyton Manning.
—Troy Renck, The Denver Post, 8 Jan. 2025
Timothée Chalamet stars as the beloved singer-songwriter in his salad days, as a 19-year-old in 1960s New York.
—Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, The Week Us, theweek, 6 Dec. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Salad days.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/salad%20days. Accessed 28 May. 2025.
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