Word of the Day

: May 1, 2008

salad days

noun plural SAL-ud-DAYZ

What It Means

: time of youthful inexperience or indiscretion; also : an early flourishing period : heyday

salad days in Context

My grandfather loves to reminisce about his salad days in the small Nebraska town where he grew up.

Did You Know?

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."