put the brakes on

Definitions

1. 1

   To stop (an event, action, or process) or to slow it down.

   • "[T]he fight I saw that day made the others look like a young ladies' quadrille. . . . [Y]ou could no more separate them two than you could put the brakes on a blame earthquake."
   • Having put the brakes on credit expansion by raising interest rates, Humphrey last week decided the time had come to step on the gas.
   • A French court on Tuesday put the brakes on the merger of the utilities Gaz de France and Suez.
2. 2

   To cease to perform one's current activity or to decrease one's level of activity.

   • "It would have been so easy for him to have the kids rolling on the floor, doubled up with laughter. So he had to put the brakes on at times."
   • “I think it calls on us here in the U.S., naturally, not to stop building nuclear power plants but to put the brakes on right now until we understand the ramifications of what’s happened in Japan,” Senator Joseph I. Lieberman . . . said.

The neighborhood

• antonymantonym(s) ofspeed up,