Word.ws English Dictionary

fail safe

fail safe is the alternative form of fail-safe.

Meaning of fail-safe

Verb

fail-safe (third-person singular simple present fail-safes, present participle fail-safing, simple past and past participle fail-safed)

  1. To compensate automatically, in the event of a failure.
  2. To make a device or mechanism fail-safe, or to add a fail-safe device or mechanism to an existing system.

See all 5 meanings of fail-safe

Forms of fail safe

third-person singular presentfails safe
present participlefailing safe
past participlefailed safe
pastfailed safe

Questions about fail safe

What is fail safe the alternative form of?
Fail safe is the alternative form of fail-safe.

Words near fail safe in the dictionary

  1. fail fast
  2. fail of
  3. fail open
  4. fail out
  5. fail over
  6. fail safe
  7. fail up
  8. fail up the ladder
  9. fail upward
  10. fail upwards
  11. fail whale

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fail safe (page history and authors); fail-safe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fail safe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fail_safe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.