salami-slicing

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
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...