salad years

salad years

A carefree time of youthful innocence, ingenuousness, and inexperience. A variant of the more common term "salad days," which comes from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. I thought that I had experienced true romantic love back in my salad years, before I graduated. Now, however, I think love is largely an elaborate delusion. Whenever I ask my grandfather the meaning of a word I hear on TV, he always laughs and says he'll tell me when I'm no longer in my salad years.
See also: salad, year
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • in (one's) salad days
  • in salad days
  • salad days
  • salad days, one's
  • your salad days
  • salad
  • while away the time
  • while the time away
  • not have a care in the world
  • breeze in
References in periodicals archive
To make matters worse, the roughly 100,000 people who entered the profession during the salad years of the 1970s and early 1980s will be reaching retirement age in a few years.
Lab organizations respond to tight labor market
A few hundred miles north the Slovakians are dusting off their own proud heritage, evoking the salad years of Father Jozef Tiso, Catholic wartime leader who Aryanized the property of Jews and arranged with Hitler for their transport to death camps farther north.
Your nation or mine?
Barefoot Lady also knows this terrain well, having finished second at Listed level on soft ground in her salad years.
Strong argument for Fahey's Lady; Saraband
Much was expected of Captain Royale in his salad years, especially after he coasted home on soft ground at Ripon last June.
Captain commands Southwell respect