Salad
late Middle English: from Old French salade, from Provençal salada, based on Latin sal ‘salt’.
wiktionary
From Middle English salade, from Old French salade, borrowed from Northern Italian salada, salata (compare insalata), from Vulgar Latin*salāta, from *salāre, from Latin saliō, from sal(“salt”). Vegetables were seasoned with brine or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings during Roman times.
etymonline
salad (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" (from PIE root *sal- "salt").
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.
