Meaning of salad days | Babel Free

Definitions

A period of inexperienced youthful innocence accompanied by enthusiasm and idealism.

idiomatic, plural, plural-only

Examples

“Cleo. Did I Charmian, euer loue Caeſar ſo? […] Char. By your moſt gracious pardon, I ſing but after you. Cleo. My Sallad dayes, When I was greene in iudgment, cold in blood[…]”

“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?”

“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.”

““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.””

“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.”

“Liz: Derek, remember when I used to want to fuck all the time? Derek: Ah, yes. The salad days. Liz: Mmh. Now, my sex window is between 3 and 3:20 pm and Derek needs not to have annoyed me that day. Derek: Doesn't happen often.”

CEFR level