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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
From Wikipedia:
“Salad days” is an idiomatic expression, referring to a youthful time, accompanied by the inexperience, enthusiasm, idealism, innocence, or indiscretion that one associates with a young person. More modern use, especially in the United States, refers to a person’s heyday when somebody was at the peak of his/her abilities—not necessarily in that person’s youth.
The phrase was coined in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in 1606. In the speech at the end of Act One in which Cleopatra is regretting her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar she says:
”...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…”
The secondary meaning mentioned above- a time of peak ability or accomplishment- makes the substitution of ‘solid’ for salad plausible as an eggcorn. Examples:
Moyer is a lot closer to social security in his career than he is to his solid days. Tom Gordon is past his prime and on the downside.
forum.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=messageboard.viewThread&entryID=52925511&groupID=106747437…26…
Pat Fraley: Only after I edited and mastered this performance, that the lesson I was taught in my solid days hit home.
podcasts.voices.com/voxtalk/2008/01/vox_talk_episode_53.html
The group he approached was cordial, but they didn’t open up until a guy who knew him from his Solid days waved.
www.hartfordinfo.org/issues/documents/f … 051905.asp
ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: Paul, Fritz Mondale was never a lion even in his solid days. He tried very hard not to come over as an old man.
transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0211/04/cf.00.html
It was the solid days of illustration! You can make so much money in that racket.
www.drawger.com/zinasaunders/?cat_id=562
These were the solid days of the 1980s when all insurance companies felt confident that they could sell anything to anybody …
www.soa.org/library/proceedings/record- … 21n122.pdf
Derrek Lee is clearly aging and is 34, his solid days are well behind him.
www.prosportsdaily.com/forums/showthrea … 408&page=2
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I love this one! And I like the solid documentation. “Solid days” is an eggcorn that I find to be more logical and accessible than the original idiom. If the original had been solid days, then “salad days” would have been a real reach.
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