salad days

Definition

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

Etymology

Coined by William Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra around 1607, see quotations.

Example Sentences

• "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."