Meaning of salami-slice | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To engage in salami slicing.
   British, idiomatic, informal, transitive
2. To divide (something) into small groups or portions; specifically, to tackle (a big task, etc.) in incremental steps.
   British, idiomatic, informal, transitive
3. To reduce (something) incrementally (for example, to cut a budget by gradually removing sums of money from it).
   British, idiomatic, informal, transitive

Equivalents

Examples

“Lawyers and businessmen made fortunes in land deals and then leveraged profits to build more ticky-tack in fragile areas. A friend of mine boasts how his company broke the ban on subdivisions in the foothills. Vast areas were closed off to hikers. The city council and Pima County supervisors, for reasons I've never understood, kept saying yes. In the end Tucson quietly salami-sliced itself to death.”

“Congress should not be misled to believe that "salami slicing" indications and off-label prescribing practices will resolve the Act's current inequities. These trends will only proliferate problems with the Act.”

“As project manager it is unlikely that you have all the necessary knowledge and subject matter expertise to undertake this task alone. You will need to involve other people in helping you salami slice the project.”

“By salami slicing the disease into subgroups, it allows them [pharmaceutical companies] to get the orphan drug approval with all the government benefits and even some of the subsidies.”

“Getting a sense of inter-generational solidarity and buy-in to a revised social contract will be critical to reform, and any approach that salami-slices the population risks instead becoming highly divisive.”

“So basically it means we are going to take an entire MEDAC out of the ability to contribute to the health care of the men and women and their families in uniform. There is no way that I can salami slice that.”

“I mean, I have a personal view that the approach to the budget has been to salami-slice across everything, so the good and the bad get cut equally. It avoids the very contentious decisions, but it also unfortunately means that some very productive stuff takes a hit, rather than gets prioritised.”

“In the last few years, as the cuts have really started to bite, austerity has morphed from theoretical Whitehall discussions about how best to salami-slice departmental budgets into the reality of people’s everyday lives.”

“"[...] Bit by bit, HS2 and its grand vision for a rail network that might actually belong in the 21st century rather than in the 19th century is being salami-sliced until all that is left is a Birmingham to London shuttle with a few token services to Manchester - benefiting few but costing us all."”

CEFR level