salad

noun

1. a usually cold dish consisting of vegetables, as lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, covered with a dressing and sometimes containing seafood, meat, or eggs.
2. any of various dishes consisting of foods, as meat, seafood, eggs, pasta, or fruit, prepared singly or combined, usually cut up, mixed with a dressing, and served cold: chicken salad; potato salad.
3. any herb or green vegetable, as lettuce, used for salads or eaten raw.
4. South Midland and Southern U.S. greens(def 22b).
5. any mixture or assortment: The usual salad of writers, artists, and musicians attended the party.

noun

1. a dish of raw vegetables, such as lettuce, tomatoes, etc, served as a separate course with cold meat, eggs, etc, or as part of a main course
2. any dish of cold vegetables or fruitpotato salad; fruit salad
3. any green vegetable used in such a dish, esp lettuce

n.late 14c., from Old French salade (14c.), from Vulgar Latin *salata, literally “salted,” short for herba salata “salted vegetables” (vegetables seasoned with brine, a popular Roman dish), from fem. past participle of *salare “to salt,” from Latin sal (genitive salis) “salt” (see salt (n.)). Dutch salade, German Salat, Swedish salat, Russian salat are from Romanic languages. Salad days, “time of youthful inexperience” (perhaps on notion of “green”) is first recorded 1606 in Shakespeare and probably owes its survival, if not its existence, to him. Salad bar first attested 1940, American English.