pick up the slack

Verb

pick up the slack (third-person singular simple present picks up the slack, present participle picking up the slack, simple past and past participle picked up the slack)

1. To tighten something that is slack so that it is taut.
   • In such cases even a four-to-one multiplying reel is much too slow to pick up the slack, and a single-action fly reel is hopelessly inadequate.1946, Horace G. Tapply, Tackle Tinkering, page 208
   • To go forward, lightly pick up the slack in one line to show the horse or horses which direction you'll be heading.2006, Steven Bowers, Marlen Steward, Farming with Horses, page 116
2. To do work that would otherwise be left undone.
   • But, to the extent that he remained insecure about his caregiving, particularly in settings outside the safe confines of home, Belinda had to pick up the slack. And the more she picked up the slack, the more he backed off and deferred to her.2010, Gillian Ranson, Against the Grain, page 129
   • When one person on a team is learning a new skill, the rest of the team can often pick up the slack and keep the team on track.2012, Stedman Graham, Ken Blanchard, Jon Huntsman, Leading Teams with Integrity
3. To provide extra needed resources.
   • In a city financed largely by user fees, government coffers have little to spare for subsidies. Voluntary contributions could pick up the slack.1998, K. Filip Palda, Home on the Urban Range: An Idea Map for Reforming the City
   • And no wonder a nanny state increasingly tries to pick up the slack.2008, Diana West, The Death of the Grown-Up
4. To act as a slack variable, converting an inequality into an equality.
   • We call them slack variables because they pick up the slack, so to speak; that is, they take on whatever values are necessary to create equalities (notice that each slack variable must be nonnegative).2009, Glenn Hurlbert, Linear Optimization: The Simplex Workbook, page 32
5. To consume something that would otherwise go to waste.
   • If a person couldn't sell their (choose one) poetry, play, sculpture, or painting on the open market, why should the taxpayers pick up the slack for the poet, artist, or playwright whose talents would be better utilized in, say, a car wash?2013, Gregg Loomis, The First Casualty
   • Two basic options are left if more export buying and more investment purchases won't pick up the slack when a declining marginal propensity to consume occurs: either more government spending or more government transfers such as increased Social Security payments to encourage more consumer spending.2013, John Lindauer, The General Theories of Inflation, Unemployment, and Government Deficits, page 69