slow-walk

Meanings

1. To delay a request or command, to drag one's feet, to stall, to obstruct, to drag out a process.

1. To punish, to chastise.

Etymology

Attested since 1973 in Southern dialects of American English; prominent since the late 1990s. Thought by William Safire to derive from a Tennessee term for the walking gait of the Tennessee Walking Horse, which is generally called "flat walk", but sometimes a "slow walk".