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fail-safe
[ feyl-seyf ]
adjective
- Electronics. pertaining to or noting a mechanism built into a system, as in an early warning system or a nuclear reactor, for insuring safety should the system fail to operate properly.
- equipped with a secondary system that insures continued operation even if the primary system fails.
- (sometimes initial capital letter) of, relating to, or designating a system of coded military controls in which bombers dispatched to a prearranged point as part of a standard operating procedure cannot advance farther without direct orders from a designated authority and cannot have the nuclear warheads they carry armed until they have passed their prearranged point.
- guaranteed to work; totally reliable:
a fail-safe recipe for a cheese soufflé.
noun
- (sometimes initial capital letter) the point beyond which the bombers cannot go without specific instruction; the fail-safe point.
- something designed to work or function automatically to prevent breakdown of a mechanism, system, or the like.
verb (used with object)
- to make fail-safe.
fail-safe
adjective
- designed to return to a safe condition in the event of a failure or malfunction
- (of a nuclear weapon) capable of being deactivated in the event of a failure or accident
- unlikely to fail; foolproof
verb
- intr to return to a safe condition in the event of a failure or malfunction
Word History and Origins
Origin of fail-safe1
Example Sentences
One significant solution implemented as a fail-safe for Level 4 automated vehicles is the concept of remote driving.
And because airplanes are packed with fail-safes, there are times when a flight with a malfunctioning system can safely proceed simply by relying on one or more backups instead.
This is a fail-safe scenario but the converse "wrong side" failures -- when the signal goes from red to green -- are much more hazardous.
However, discussions of fall-backs and fail-safes have not been welcome in the Wales camp while the possibility of automatic qualification remains.
"These memory immune cells with latent suppressive properties act as a fail-safe mechanism in addition to the protection from traditional memory suppressive T cells."
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