Slug is Already in Use – How to Reuse?

Hi!

I originally had a tag called Food with one post tagged as Food.

Now I’ve created a category called Food, and it will be a top level navigation so I really want it to be called Food. I deleted the tag Food, hoping to be able to reuse the slug, but it still says:

“The slug “food” is already in use by another term.”

Is there a way that I can reclaim the slug food so I can use it for the category instead? I don’t want an ugly URL with food-2 or anything in it.

Thank you!!