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salad days (Idiom Thursday)

February 16, 2012

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.

Today’s idiom comes from Anthony and Cleopatra (1606) by William Shakespeare, so it’s more than 400 hundred years old. Originally it referred to the time when you were young and inexperienced.
According to
some, in American English the meaning has shifted and it revers to the time hen you were at the peak of their abilities, in your heyday [na vrcholu slávy].

The idiom was also used by Spandau Ballet (in 1983) and Patrick Stump (lyrics):

One of the episodes of  Monty Python’s Flying Circus is also called Salad Days:


What about you? Are you salad days already over or are you waiting for them?
And what do you think: is there a similar idiom in Czech or another language?

From → idioms & phrases

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