sure-fire

See also: surefire

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From sure +‎ fire, originally used to denote the efficacy of firearms (rifles) to fire.

Adjective

sure-fire (comparative more sure-fire, superlative most sure-fire)

  1. Guaranteed to work or happen.
    That hat should be a sure-fire way to spot him in a crowd.
    • 2005, Cory Doctorow, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town‎[1]:
      […] 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, […]
    • 2014 April 29, Andrew Clements, “ENO's 14/15 season: some sure-fire winners, while Coliseum plans will strengthen the company”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN:
      There certainly looks to be a whole clutch of sure-fire winners among the 11 promised new productions.
    • 2025 February 14, JD Vance, “Munich security conference speech in full”, in The Telegraph‎[3]:
      I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most sure-fire way to destroy democracy.

Translations

Translations

See also

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.