[
US
/feɪɫˈsæf/
]
ADJECTIVE
-
guaranteed not to fail
a fail-safe recipe for cheese souffle -
eliminating danger by compensating automatically for a failure or malfunction
a fail-safe device in a nuclear weapon to deactivate it automatically in the event of accident
NOUN
- a mechanism capable of returning to a safe state in case there is a failure or malfunction
How To Use fail-safe In A Sentence
- If you're getting mixed signals, give the subject this fail-safe test on a piece of paper.
- Then the ice caps will be able to freeze again; it's a fail-safe mechanism.
- Columbia was the first spacecraft to disintegrate on re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere - and the results, in falling debris, were a shocking lesson to the engineers responsible for fail-safe planning.
- There were fail-safe steps in place, and they didn't work.
- The Tangara trains are equipped with a number of fail-safe devices, including one known as a deadman's brake.
- I have my master plan set, as well as fail-safes in position as well.
- Why doesn't such equipment have a fail-safe process that requires a multistep action before the device is stopped? Times, Sunday Times
- The other thing we had noticed when Sally had come in to have the warning light checked out was that the transmission was always stuck in third gear, or fail-safe mode.
- This is an important fail-safe feature of sand bioreactors that acts to protect the receiving environment from poorly treated wastewater.
- The major motivation of new collectors seems to be the perception that art is a fail-safe investment, like a government guaranteed tax-free fixed deposit with spectacular interest rates.
