Word.ws English Dictionary

take up the slack

take up the slack verb: to tighten something that is slack so that it is taut.

Verb

take up the slack (third-person singular simple present takes up the slack, present participle taking up the slack, simple past took up the slack, past participle taken up the slack)

  1. To tighten something that is slack so that it is taut.
    • You need to take up the slack in your cables so shifters and brakes function properly.1996, Dave King, Michael Kaminer, The Mountain Bike Experience
    • To tighten the wire, thread a stick through both loops of wire; by twisting the stick you will take up the slack in the wires, pulling them taut.1999, Jackie Clay, Build the Right Fencing for Horses
  2. To do work that would otherwise be left undone.
    • A production never has enough time or enough money. Someone has to take up the slack.1995, Bill Tarling, Peter Messaline, In the Background: An Extra's Handbook, page 48
    • When fighting at the front grew intense and casualties got heavy, traveling teams of surgeons were called in temporarily to take up the slack.2007, Thomas E. Oblinger, Old Man from the Repple Depple, page 311
  3. To provide extra resources that are not met by normal sources.
    • As oil production worldwide plateaus and falters, other fossil fuels are coming under strain, and no alternative — renewable or otherwise — shows any sign of being able to take up the slack.2008, John Michael Greer, The Long Descent
    • ...and local farms were not productive enough to take up the slack.2012, Earl J. Hess, The Civil War in the West
  4. To act as a slack variable, converting an inequality into an equality.
    • A slack variable is a real variable which is introduced to take up the slack in an inequality constraint, i.e., to convert an inequality constraint to an equality constraint.2012, Donald A. Pierre, Optimization Theory with Applications
  5. To consume something that would otherwise go to waste.
    • It is the nature of monopoly capitalism to create unused industrial capacity and unemployment. The arms economy is an effort to take up the slack in this unused capacity.1986, Avner Cohen, Steven Lee, Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity
    • Additionally, new export markets may be developed that will take up the slack left by falling demand in the United States.1987, Wilderness Planning Amendment

Examples of take up the slack in a sentence

  • The engines laboured, straining between the forces of tide and wind to take up the slack on the huge chains and pull the ferry across the water.2012, Gabriel J Klein, Second Night: The Spear:
  • Of course it is, and the people who remain have to take up the slack, but it is far more preferable than closing the doors.2012, Sandy Steinman, The Small Business Turnaround Guide:
  • So he had doubled his efforts around the place to take up the slack.2013, Jill Sanders, Returning Pride, page 57:
  • We have but only one life to live I take you back, you take me back I come up short and you take up the slack2012, Eric Jerome Shumpert, Power, Passion and Pain, page 31:

Forms of take up the slack

third-person singular presenttakes up the slack
present participletaking up the slack
pasttook up the slack
past participletaken up the slack
alternative formpick up the slack

Questions about take up the slack

What does take up the slack mean?
Take up the slack means to tighten something that is slack so that it is taut.
How do you use take up the slack in a sentence?
The engines laboured, straining between the forces of tide and wind to take up the slack on the huge chains and pull the ferry across the water.
What part of speech is take up the slack?
Take up the slack is a verb.
What is the past tense of take up the slack?
The past tense of take up the slack is took up the slack.

Words near take up the slack in the dictionary

  1. take up the gauntlet
  2. take up the glove
  3. take up the hatchet
  4. take up the mantle
  5. take up the running
  6. take up the slack
  7. take up with
  8. take upon oneself
  9. take ups
  10. take vows
  11. take water

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take up the slack (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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