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Salad Days

.

Days of inexperience, when persons are very green.

“My salad days,


When I was green in judgment.”


Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra, i. 5.

A penʹorth of salad oil. A strapping; a castigation. It is a joke on All Foolsʹ Day to send one to the saddler’s for a “penʹorth of salad oil.” The pun is between “salad oil,” as above, and the French avoir de la salade, “to be flogged.” The French salader and saladc are derived from the salle or saddle on which schoolboys were at one time birched. A block for the purpose used to be kept in some of our public schools. Oudin translates the phrase “Donner la salle à un escolierbyScopar un scolari innanzi à tutti gli altri.” (Recherches Italiennes et Françoiscs, part ii. 508.)

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Saints
Saivas
Saker
Sakhrat [Sak-rah]
Sakta
Sa-kuntala
Sakya-Muni
Sal Prunella
Salacacabia or Salacacaby of Apicius
Salace
Salad Days
Salamander
Salamander’s Wool
Salary
Salchichon
Sale by the Candle
Salem
Salic Law
Saliens (The)
Salient Angles
Salisbury Cathedral