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Origin of Phrases - S
Salad Days
Meaning: Youthful inexperience, a time of early success and promise.
Example: The salad days for Apple computer are over.
Origin: Popularized in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," Act 1, scene 5, written in 1606. Cleopatra, at one point, is lavishing praise on her new love, Antony. One of Cleo's female attendants reminds her that she (Cleo) once felt the same passion about Caesar.
Cleopatra retorts that was in her "salad days, when I was green in judgment: cold in blood".
In this specific context, the phrase means "naive," but it also has the sense of "in one's youth," a time of blooming health and infinite prospect.
One might wonder if those were Cleo's "Caesar salad days"! Perhaps Shakespeare's statement was a reference to green being the color of salad, and cold the temperature of said salad.
Green is frequently used to describe youth or inexperience. Of course salad refers to many dishes (potato salad, egg salad, pasta salad) not just the lettuce based salad so popular today.
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