Salad days

"Salad days" is a Shakespearean idiomatic expression to refer to a youthful time, accompanied by the inexperience, enthusiasm, idealism, innocence, or indiscretion that one associates with a young person. A more modern use, especially in the United States, refers to a heyday, a period when somebody was at the peak of their abilities—not necessarily in that person's youth.

The phrase was coined in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in 1606. In the speech at the end of Act One in which Cleopatra is regretting her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar she says:

...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood...

The phrase became popular only from the middle of the 19th century, coming to mean “a period of youthful inexperience or indiscretion." The metaphor comes from Cleopatra's use of the word 'green' — presumably meaning someone youthful, inexperienced, or immature. Her references to "green" and "cold" both suggest qualities of salads.

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage summarizes several other possible meanings of the metaphor:

Whether the point is that youth, like salad, is raw, or that salad is highly flavoured and youth loves high flavours, or that innocent herbs are youth's food as milk is babes' and meat is men's, few of those who use the phrase could perhaps tell us; if so, it is fitter for parrots' than for human speech.

Queen Elizabeth II during her Silver Jubilee Loyal Address, referring to her vow to God and her people when she made her 21st birthday broadcast: "Although that vow was made in my salad days, when I was green in judgment, I do not regret nor retract one word of it."

The phrase has been used as the title of several books, including the novels Salad Days by Francoise Sagan and by Charles Romalotti, the autobiography The Salad Days by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and numerous cookbooks.

Paul Greenberg, "Tuna's End," New York Times Magazine article: "Aboard one Zodiac, Frank Hewetson, a 20-year Greenpeace veteran who in his salad days as a protester scaled the first BP deepwater oil rigs off Scotland, tried to direct his pilot toward the net so that he could throw a daisy chain of sandbags over its floating edge and allow the bluefin to escape."

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