salad days
salad days
1600–10
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
| a gadget; dingus; thingumbob. |
| salad days | |
| —pl n | |
| a period of youth and inexperience | |
| [allusion to Antony and Cleopatra (1.v.73) by William Shakespeare: ``my salad days When I was green in judgment, cold in blood''] | |
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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salad days definition
A time of youth and inexperience; often, a better and more innocent time. The expression comes from William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, where Cleopatra says her early infatuation with Julius Caesar was foolish: “My salad days, when I was green in judgment.” (“Green” refers both to inexperience and to the color of a salad.)
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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salad days
The time of youth, innocence, and inexperience, as in Back in our salad days we went anywhere at night, never thinking about whether it was safe or not. This expression, alluding to the greenness of inexperience, was probably invented by Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra (1:5), when Cleopatra, now enamored of Antony, speaks of her early admiration for Julius Caesar as foolish: "My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood."
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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