salami-slice

Verb

salami-slice (third-person singular simple present salami-slices, present participle salami-slicing, simple past and past participle salami-sliced)

1. (UK, idiomatic, informal, transitive) To divide (something) into small groups or portions; specifically, to tackle (a big task, etc.) in incremental steps.
   • 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...1989, Mort Rosenblum, Back Home: A Foreign Correspondent Rediscovers America, New York, N.Y.: Morrow, →ISBN, page 198
   • 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.1990 March 2, Thomas G. Wiggans, “[Serono Laboratories, Inc., letter to Henry Arnold Waxman, chairman, Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, regarding replies to statements made at the hearing...
2. (UK, idiomatic, informal, transitive) To reduce (something) incrementally (for example, to cut a budget by gradually removing sums of money from it).
   • 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.2007 March 27, Gale S. Pollock, The State of the Military Health Care System: Hearing before the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, One...
   • 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.2011 June 9, Naomi Long, Corporation Tax: First Report of Session 2010–12: House of Commons, Northern Ireland Affairs Committee […] (HC 558-II (incorporating HC 803, HC 919 and HC 951)), volumes II...