Salami-slice
verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 To engage in salami slicing.; To divide (something) into small groups or portions; specifically, to tackle (a big task, etc.) in incremental steps. British, idiomatic, informal, transitive
"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."
- 2 To engage in salami slicing.; To reduce (something) incrementally (for example, to cut a budget by gradually removing sums of money from it). British, idiomatic, informal, transitive
"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."
Example
More 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."
Etymology
From the way a large salami is reduced in size by having thin slices removed from it.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.