salad days

English

Etymology

Coined by William Shakespeare.[1][2]

Noun

salad days pl (plural only)

  1. A period of inexperienced youthful innocence accompanied by enthusiasm and idealism.
    • 1874 October, The American Educational Monthly, page 462:
      The season of salad days has been rightly called a season of folly—rightly, because nature wisely intended salad days for folly, and we are wise to regard them as a time for folly. But are we wise when, halting upon the crutches age finds convenient after the gambols of youth have lost their attractions, we condemn this season of harmless folly to perpetual reprobation?
    • 1952 May, George Santayana, “I Like to Be a Stranger”, in The Atlantic‎:
      But it must be in solitude. I do not need or desire to hobnob artificially with other old men in order to revisit them in their salad days, and to renew my own.
    • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855:
      “I'll bet he was swiping things as a small boy.” “Only biscuits.” “I beg your pardon?” “Or crackers you would call them, wouldn't you? He was telling me he occasionally pinched a cracker or two in his salad days.”
    • 2015, Penny Dreadful, season 2, episode 6, spoken by Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton), 23m30s from the start:
      Do you know I've not been to a ball in ages? I used to be quite the dancer in my salad days, if you can believe such a thing.

Coordinate terms

References
  1. c. 1606–1607, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene v], page 344:
    Cleo. My Sallad dayes, / When I was greene in iudgment, cold in blood
  2. Albert Jack (2005) Red herrings and white elephants, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 44: “The phrase is a simple one with a simple origin provided, once again, by Shakespeare.”

Further reading
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