Other forms: safer, safest, safes
Safe means nothing can hurt you. The child buckled into the back seat, the front door locked from the inside, the passport zipped into an inner pocket.
It points both ways. A person is safe from something - safe from the storm, safe from the dogs - and a thing is safe when it cannot do harm: safe drinking water, scissors that are safe for children. A safe choice is the dull one that will not go wrong, so a safe bet is nearly certain. There is a noun too: the safe is the heavy metal box in the hotel wardrobe. Fixed phrases run everywhere - safe and sound, play it safe, better safe than sorry, on the safe side. The adverb is safely and the noun for the state itself is safety.
1adjectivesafeNot in danger; protected from harm.~20%
“The dog was found three days later, cold and thin but safe.”
2adjectivecausingNot causing harm or risk to anyone.~68%
“The water from this tap is safe to drink.”
3adjectiveunlikelyUnlikely to go wrong; cautious rather than bold.~10%
“Grey was the safe choice for the walls.”
4nounstrongA strong locked box or cupboard for money and valuables.~2%
“He left the passports in the hotel safe.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Safe came through Old French sauf from Latin salvus, 'whole, safe', and behind that a Proto-Indo-European root *solh2- meaning 'whole, every'. So the old picture of safety is wholeness: nothing broken, nothing missing. English already had a word for it, Old English sicor, 'secure, sure', and the French newcomer pushed it aside.
Proto-Indo-European
*solh₂- — whole, every
Proto-Italic
*salawos
Latin
salvus — whole, safe
Old French
sauf
Middle English
sauf
English, today
safe
Built from
From Middle English sauf, safe, saf, saaf, from Old French sauf, saulf, salf (“safe”), from Latin salvus (“whole, safe”), from Proto-Italic salawos, from Proto-Indo-European solh₂- (“whole, every”). Displaced Old English sicor (“secure, sure”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA