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Do you ensure or insure?
There is considerable confusion about whether ensure and insure are distinct words, variants of the same word, or some combination of the two. They are in fact different words, but with sufficient overlap in meaning and form as to create uncertainty as to which should be used when. We define ensure as “to make sure, certain, or safe” and one sense of insure, “to make certain especially by taking necessary measures and precautions,” is quite similar. But insure has the additional meaning “to provide or obtain insurance on or for,” which is not shared by ensure. Some usage guides recommend using insure in financial contexts (as in “she insured her book collection for a million dollars”) and ensure in the general sense “to make certain” (as in “she ensured that the book collection was packed well”).
ensure, insure, assure, secure mean to make a thing or person sure.
ensure, insure, and assure are interchangeable in many contexts where they indicate the making certain or inevitable of an outcome, but ensure may imply a virtual guarantee
, while insure sometimes stresses the taking of necessary measures beforehand
, and assure distinctively implies the removal of doubt and suspense from a person's mind.
secure implies action taken to guard against attack or loss.
Examples of insure in a Sentence
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'insure.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Middle English, to assure, probably alteration of assuren
1635, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1
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Cite this Entry
“Insure.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insure. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.
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