sure-fire
sure-fire adjective: guaranteed to work or happen.
Adjective
sure-fire (comparative more sure-fire, superlative most sure-fire)
- Guaranteed to work or happen.
- That hat should be a sure-fire way to spot him in a crowd.
- […] just as he knew that showing up for lunch with a brown bag full of dried squirrel jerky and mushrooms and lemongrass was a surefire way to end up social roadkill in the high school hierarchy, […]2005, Cory Doctorow, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Examples of sure-fire in a sentence
- There certainly looks to be a whole clutch of sure-fire winners among the 11 promised new productions.2014 April 29, Andrew Clements, “ENO's 14/15 season: some sure-fire winners, while Coliseum plans will strengthen the company”, in The...
- In fact, it is the most sure-fire way to destroy democracy.2025 February 14, JD Vance, “Munich security conference speech in full”, in The Telegraph:
Forms of sure-fire
| comparative | more sure-fire |
|---|---|
| superlative | most sure-fire |
| alternative form | surefire |
Origin of sure-fire
From sure + fire, originally used to denote the efficacy of firearms (rifles) to fire.
Questions about sure-fire
- What does sure-fire mean?
- Sure-fire means guaranteed to work or happen.
- How do you use sure-fire in a sentence?
- There certainly looks to be a whole clutch of sure-fire winners among the 11 promised new productions.
- What part of speech is sure-fire?
- Sure-fire is an adjective.
Words near sure-fire in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sure-fire (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.
Last updated:
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