MEANING
Designed so that a failure leaves a system in a comparatively safe state.
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Words that belong together
- fail-safe valve
- fail-safe mechanism
On the page
The fail-safe valve closed when power failed.
They tested the fail-safe mechanism before opening the reactor room.
Related words
Word forms
- Base
- fail-safe
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Usage notes
Primary category: sci-fi. Forms: Normally non-gradable as a design aim. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.
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