How to Use fail-safe in a Sentence

fail-safe

adjective
  • This allowed the train to move while the doors were open, contrary to the train’s fail-safe design.
    — Laura Crimaldi, BostonGlobe.com, 27 June 2023
  • Then another fail-safe — a credential scan that should have also caught the key — missed that the key was there.
    — Wes Davis, The Verge, 6 Sep. 2023
  • As for sounds, white noise is a pretty fail-safe choice for most babies who are accustomed to the noise of their mother’s womb.
    — Sarah Bradley, Parents, 10 July 2023
  • Mint or lemon balm are fail-safe options for sunset cocktails or morning teas.
    — Deanna Kizis, Sunset Magazine, 7 July 2023
  • What McPherson is yearning for now is a fail-safe uniform of sorts—clothes that will gird her against the uncertainty of our hazy and not-quite-post-pandemic world.
    — Alison S. Cohn, Harper's BAZAAR, 8 Aug. 2023
  • For older decks with uncapped composite boards, Trex doesn’t have any fail-safe suggestions.
    — Jeanne Huber, Washington Post, 22 Mar. 2024
  • My Kabul One of my fail-safe tips for finding good food in an unfamiliar place is to look for dishes that don’t seem to fit on a menu — say, butter chicken in an Afghan restaurant.
    — Tom Sietsema, Washington Post, 24 Jan. 2024
  • The result: The fusion algorithm relied solely on the data from the gyroscope as the drone switched over to fail-safe mode and landed safely before any damage was done.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 26 Feb. 2019
  • But as Ben Wheatley’s misguided 2020 Netflix movie version proved, the material is far from fail-safe.
    — David Benedict, Variety, 19 Sep. 2023
  • Although there is no fail-safe approach to addressing the risks associated with high heat exposure, talking more about what's at stake is a good start.
    — Terri Adams-Fuller, Scientific American, 15 June 2023
  • Luckily, Versace and Omega is a pretty fail-safe combination.
    — Rachel Cormack, Robb Report, 14 Mar. 2024
  • Adding even a blandly effective, third-pair option would be a playoff nice fail-safe.
    — Dom Luszczyszyn, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2026
  • This suggests gaps in contingency planning and basic fail-safe design.
    — Missy Cummings, IEEE Spectrum, 2 Mar. 2026
  • Picking a fail-safe in case of a cataclysmic event that wipes out everyone else dates back to the Cold War.
    — Will Weissert, Chicago Tribune, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Consider this the fail-safe way to make a statement during the colder months—a leopard-print coat that's both fiercely cool and classic.
    — Andrea Cheng, InStyle, 29 Dec. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fail-safe.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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