slack (redirected from picking up the slack)

slack¹

1. 

a. a patch of water without current

b. a slackening of a current

2. Prosody (in sprung rhythm) the unstressed syllable or syllables

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slack²

small pieces of coal with a high ash content

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slack [slak]

(engineering)

Looseness or play in a mechanism, as the play in the trigger of a small-arms weapon.

(geology)

A hollow or depression between lines of shore dunes or in a sandbank or mudbank on a shore.

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1.	(operating system)	slack - Internal fragmentation. Space allocated to a disk file but not actually used to store useful information.
2.	(jargon)	slack - In the theology of the Church of the SubGenius, a mystical substance or quality that is the prerequisite of all human happiness. Since Unix files are stored compactly, except for the unavoidable wastage in the last block or fragment, it might be said that "Unix has no slack". See ha ha only serious.