Definition of "slash-and-burn" [slash-and-burn]

• Of or being a form of agriculture in which an area of forest is cleared by cutting and burning and is then planted, usually for several seasons, before being left to return to forest. (adjective)
• Drastic or destructive: "The past few years of painful, slash-and-burn expense cutting have made top brokerage executives reluctant to revert to their former, profligate ways” ( David Henry). (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "NHS reform is a 'slash-and-burn approach', says doctors' union"
• "For lawmakers in both parties, the sudden outbreak of collegiality represented an opportunity to prove to the public, and one another, that the slash-and-burn style that has defined House discourse lately is not the only way to conduct the nation's business."
• "Throughout the book he characterizes dozens of recordings of Mahler's works, often with slash-and-burn criticism ( "every sound" in Pierre Boulez's performance of the Sixth Symphony is "strung out like entrails on a mortician's table") and sometimes with bouts of adulation that suggest the ideal of a definitive or "best" account."