take up the slack

present singular third person takes up the slack · participle present taking up the slack · past took up the slack · participle past taken up the slack · alternative pick 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

   2 more examples

   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

   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

2. To do work that would otherwise be left undone.

   So he had doubled his efforts around the place to take up the slack.

   2013, Jill Sanders, Returning Pride, page 57

   3 more examples

   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

   It is not unusual in turnaround situations for the turnaround manager to eliminate up to 20 percent of the jobs within the company. Is that tough? 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

3. To provide extra resources that are not met by normal sources.

   ...and local farms were not productive enough to take up the slack.

   2012, Earl J. Hess, The Civil War in the West

   3 more examples

   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

   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 slack

   2012, Eric Jerome Shumpert, Power, Passion and Pain, page 31

   This does not of course prevent people from acting strategically — deciding not to contribute in the hope that others will take up the slack. But it will be clear in these situations that such people are behaving unfairly and that prima facie at least, those who decide to take up the slack are doing more than justice requires.

   2013, David Miller, Justice for Earthlings: Essays in Political Philosophy, page 208

4. mathematicsTo 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.

   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

   2 more examples

   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

   Honor gained through euergetism (i.e., paying for public works that benefited the community), paying to build a school or theater or temple at home, helped take up the slack.

   2013, Michael Burger, The Shaping of Western Civilization, page 124