Where Did the Expression “Salad Days” Come From and What Does “Salad Days” Mean?

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Karen Hill

Salad days are the “green” days of our youth.

William Shakespeare refers to “salad days” negatively when he has Cleopatra mention them in his play Antony and Cleopatra, where she claims that her youthful naïveté led to her love affair with Julius Caesar.

Since then the phrase has come to mean “youthful good times that are fondly remembered.”

Curiously, the word salad comes from a Latin word meaning “salted vegetables.”

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