Definition of the word tossed salad

The phrase "tossed salad" as a culinary term originally emerged in the United States during the early 20th century. It doesn't have a direct agricultural or cooking connotation - instead, it stems from an analogy drawn between a mixed salad and a disheveled head of hair. The origins of this analogy are uncertain, but some food historians speculate that the term was first coined by Juliet Corson, a prominent culinary educator and author in New York City. In her 1886 book "Cooking American," she wrote: "A salad of many colors, cut in very fine pieces, may be called a 'tossed salad.'" The notion of "tossing" a salad became a popular cooking technique during the 1930s and 40s, when Olive Oyl, a cartoon character from the comic strip "Popeye" and subsequently the animated series "Tom and Jerry," started using it in a skit called "Spinach and the Rootinest Tootinest Vegetable Man." This skit later inspired an animated short featuring Olive Oyl where spinach became the staple ingredient of her "tossed salad." Since then, "tossed salad" has become a familiar term in American English, describing a mixed greens dish dressed with various ingredients such as lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and croutons, mixed together and coated with dressing while being "tossed" either by hand or with a power salad spinner. As a sign of its popularity, "tossed salad" was even mentioned in the 1967 hit song "Hair" by the band "Blood, Sweat & Tears."