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Mr. Tom Posted 11 years ago
Vocabulary

Salad Days

Hi

Chambers English Language Dictionary says that the idiom salad days is old-fashioned; N gram says otherwise.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=salad+days&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csalad%20days%3B%2Cc0

Who would you say is more appropriate?

Thanks,

Tom
  

Top answer

Chambers. I don't remember the last time I used/heard/read it. Ages ago.

  • Chambers.
  • I don't remember the last time I used/heard/read it.
  • Ages ago.
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3 Answers
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Chambers.

I don't remember the last time I used/heard/read it. Ages ago.
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CliveI don't remember the last time I used/heard/read it. Ages ago.
Same here.

CJ
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This appears in Antony and Cleopatra (written around 1606), act I. There, Cleopatra says: "My salad [younger] days, when I was green in judgement, cold in blood". So this saying has been around since at least the early 1600's, and probably much longer than that, as Shakespeare invariably reproduced the idioms of his day, rather than invented new ones.

In the US you might hear this if s

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