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Glite Dictionary
to cut through the red tape

to cut through the red tape

2 4.4
Remove slow official rules to make things happen faster
  • idiom
translation icon : eliminar la burocracia
  • I cut through the red tape with real estate and with the government-assisted HUD housing departments to facilitate the re-homing of evacuees based on homelessness superseding their current waiting lists.

Examples

  • You're not family, but I can cut through the red tape.

    Midnight Show (2016)

  • And so too should our esteemed President, who talks a good game but, as usual, has failed to deliver in this case when it came to cutting through the red tape.

    Blog text (26)

  • Coming out of the President's call with utility companies Tuesday night, FEMA has established a power restoration working group, which you know about, that includes representatives from the utilities at the National Response Coordination Center to cut through the red tape, increase federal, state, local, and private coordination, and restore power to people as quickly as possible.

    Blog text (25)

  • You'd probably need a how-to guide to cut through the red tape you might encounter, a video to boost interest among parents and other decision makers, a briefing sheet to chisel away any misinformation in your community, and a brace of other materials.

    Academic text (1994)

  • To cut through the red tape, manage the conflict, and ultimately accelerate the RFG rulemaking process, the EPA employed a collaborative process called regulatory negotiation, otherwise known as reg-neg.

    Academic text (1998)

  • The new policy will help us cut through the red tape and expedite the approval process.

  • Employees were frustrated by the delays, so the manager decided to cut through the red tape for faster results.

  • To launch the initiative on time, the team needed to cut through the red tape that was hindering their progress.

Synonyms

to streamline
vsto cut through the red tape
41 4.1

Make a process or system simpler and more efficient

focuses specifically on removing bureaucratic obstacles rather than general efficiency
to cut red tape
vsto cut through the red tape
1 3.7

To remove official rules and extra paperwork that delay action

is the same meaning but a slightly different phrasing

Antonyms

to complicate
101 4.1

To make something harder to understand or do

to hinder
75 3.6

To make it difficult for people or things to do something

How Fast

to cut through the red tape
2 4.4

Surface Forms

cut through the red tape infinitive
cut through the red tape past
cut through the red tape past participle
cutting through the red tape present participle
cuts through the red tape third person singular

Morphology

cut + through + the + red + tape

The verb portion 'cut through' is fairly transparent — combining 'cut' and 'through' suggests removing or bypassing obstacles — but the key noun phrase 'red tape' is an idiomatic metaphor for bureaucracy that cannot be derived from 'red' + 'tape'. Because the action is predictable but the referent is opaque (and not cross-linguistically obvious), a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would only partially infer the expression's meaning.

Etymology

Cut through the red tape comes from old offices where important papers were tied with red tape, a red ribbon, and a clerk who wanted to move the papers would literally cut through that ribbon to free them. That's why the phrase now means 'to remove official rules and delays'.