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

Did you know?

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

he worked for NASA in its salad days

Recent Examples on the Web

These examples are automatically compiled from online sources to illustrate current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

But the Fed’s rate cut is cutting into banks’ net interest income, and has some worried the salad days are over. —

Peter Green, Quartz, 20 Oct. 2024 In the salad days when Beijing was giving the industry a lot of support, these local authorities found ways to involve themselves in the effort through direct investments in EV producers or taking out loans and issuing bonds on behalf of these manufacturers. —

Milton Ezrati, Forbes, 3 Oct. 2024 The salad days that came with the old model have been thrown out, so now nobody knows how to make money. —

Anne Thompson, IndieWire, 20 Sep. 2024 Hall returns in the new series, which debuts on Showtime on Dec. 13, as a voiceover only, narrating young Dexter’s salad days. —

Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 12 Sep. 2024 See all Example Sentences for salad days