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  1. salad days love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A time of youth, innocence, and inexperience: "my salad days,/When I was green in judgment, cold in blood” ( Shakespeare).

Wiktionary

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

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. a period when a person is young and inexperienced.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. the best time of youth

Etymologies

  1. Coined by William Shakespeare, in Anthony and Cleopatra, act 1, sc. 5: (Wiktionary)
  2. Coined by William Shakespeare. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “He had no childhood; his salad days were bitter herbs; his later life was one wild tempest of ambition frustrated, of love unsated or unreturned, of friendship misprized or thought to be misprized.”

    The Love Affairs of Great Musicians

  • “But the quality in Shelley and in George Sand which bewitched even the austere Matthew Arnold in his green and salad days is the poetising of that liberative eighteenth century philosophy into "beautiful idealisms" of a love emancipated from human limitations, a love exalted to the height of its gamut by the influences of nature, triumphantly seeking its own or shattered in magnificent despair.”

    The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters

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hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. time of life

reverse dictionary (1)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. salad days

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Comments

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  • oroboros Refers to the days of carefree innocence and pleasure of one's youth.

    Origin: Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, 1606:

    CLEOPATRA: My salad days,
    When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
    To say as I said then! But, come, away;
    Get me ink and paper:
    He shall have every day a several greeting,
    Or I'll unpeople Egypt.
    Sep 14, 2007

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‘salad days’ has been looked up 1580 times, loved by 1 person, added to 8 lists, commented on 1 time, and is not a valid Scrabble word.