MEANING
To be less demanding or critical of someone and allow them some leeway.
Use it for
being less harsh on someone; allowing room for mistakes; relaxing expectations during a difficult time; giving someone more freedom to handle a taskAllows leniency because demands or judgments may be too severe in the circumstances. Writing functions: Allowing leeway. Semantic categories (by meaning): Leniency; Social judgment; Patience. Contexts: General conversation; Creative prose.
On the page
She has only been here a week; cut her some slack.
The supervisor cut us some slack while we learned the new system.
Word forms
- Base
- cut someone some slack
Usage notes
Inflect cut: cuts someone some slack; cut someone some slack; cutting someone some slack. Put the person between cut and some slack. Register: informal. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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