slippery slope

noun

1. a dangerous and irreversible course:

   the slippery slope from narcotics to prison.

Word History and Origins

Origin of slippery slope¹

First recorded in 1985–90

Idioms and Phrases

A dangerous course, one that leads easily to catastrophe, as in He's on a slippery slope, compromising his values to please both the bosses and the union . This metaphoric expression alludes to traversing a slick hillside, in constant danger of falling. [Mid-1900s]

Example Sentences

This has been pitched as greasing the skids on the slippery slope to socialism, and McCarthy presided over it.

From Washington Post

Having survived a slippery slope on Thin Ice, protagonist Beth Rivers has been laying low in Benedict, Alaska.

From Ozy

Last week, she suggested such a bill might be a slippery slope toward excessive government regulation of business.

From Washington Post

The NCAA and 11 of its top conferences, worried that the ruling was a slippery slope toward a true open labor market for players, appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which will make its first antitrust ruling on college sports in 37 years.

From Time

Historically, conservatives treated the minimum wage as an affront to free labor and a step on a slippery slope towards statism.

From The Daily Beast

Swiss leaders also dispel the “slippery slope” idea by repeatedly rejecting substantial minimum wage increases.

From The Daily Beast

The slippery slope argument is a way of keeping the hands-off-the-Internet-entirely philosophy going.

From The Daily Beast

So I found that scene to be the most “slippery slope,” in terms of how do you act that?

From The Daily Beast

But the other major issue for some critics is the idea that the Tennessee law creates a slippery slope.

From The Daily Beast

Some fall to rise no more, but their surviving comrades rush up the slippery slope.

From Project Gutenberg

In the drenching rain the French pushed forward, dragging their guns with great difficulty up the slippery slope.

From Project Gutenberg

The more active of the attackers assisted those who experienced difficulty in negotiating the slippery slope.

From Project Gutenberg

Margery took hold of the rope, meanwhile gazing up the slippery slope.

From Project Gutenberg

Scrambling up a slippery slope, they were soon out of the water, on a narrow, shelving ledge running along a steep wall.

From Project Gutenberg