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Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?
2

Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

(OP)
In several documents, I've seen these three words used interchangably.  The dictionary I used wasn't overly helpful in determining the difference and correct usages for all three.  

I usually use "insure" when referring to insurance (life, car, home, etc.,i.e., are you insured?.  I usually use "assure" the same as reassure, i.e., let me assure you..., and I use "ensure" in a procedure when I want someone to verify something, i.e., Ensure the valve is closed.

Is this correct?  Any comments?

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

100% correct.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

I agree they are not interchangeable; your usage choices work for me.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

2
Please assure me that I will be insured if my car is stolen and I neglected to ensure that I didn't leave the key in the ignition.

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

ChemmeFemme,

In America, they try to sell you "Life Insurance" rather than the "Life Assurance".  "Life Insurance" assumes that you can only ever die by accident.  "Life Assurance" puts your mind at rest for the inevitable.

But then again, the main difference between Americans and British is that Americans consider death to be optional - given enough cash and the right doctors/lawyers, life can be prolonged for eternity.  Therefore, death must always be accidental.

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

This is what atomica says... "USAGE NOTE   Assure, ensure, and insure all mean 'to make secure or certain.' Only assure is used with reference to a person in the sense of 'to set the mind at rest': assured the leader of his loyalty. Although ensure and insure are generally interchangeable, only insure is now widely used in American English in the commercial sense of 'to guarantee persons or property against risk.'"

Thanks
SC

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

From my Macquarie Australian Dictionary:
assure
3. to make (a future event) sure; ensure.
6. to insure, esp. against death.

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

I guess the three words come from the same root. Insurance in French is called assurance. However, as far as I'm aware there are three distinctively different meanings in modern English as chemfemme wrote, so I tend to disagree with the Aussi dictionary. (Yes! imho it is possible to disagree with thick books, they're written by people who are human beings just like us).

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

I've been reading "vivir a contarlo" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez lately, and at one part of the book he refers to a gentleman who spent many years correcting dictionaries in multiple languages, after discovering that a definition in a dictionary in a language other than his own was incorrect, and writing to tell them about it...

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

ivymike - How do we know that the gentleman's definition is the correct one?

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?


My dictionary:

1. assure: to convince, to remove doubt, to give  
    confidence, to make certain, to transfer ownership,
    also as 2. and 3. below
2. ensure: to make certain, guarantee, to make safe,
    secure
3. insure: as for 2., also to cover with insurance

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

(OP)
I find that the dictionary just confuses things further.  They give the definition for assure, then use assure (or the defination that they gave for assure) in the defination for the other two, elaborating just slightly.  This seems to imply that they can indeed be used interchangably; however, if someone were to come up to me and say "I insure you everything will be just fine", I would assume they were either asking for money or had arranged some sort of policy for me!!!

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

(OP)
Thanks for the feedback everyone!

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

Life assurance is a policy that pays out on death, whenever that happens.
Life insurance is against unexpected early death i.e. before a certain age, in an accident etc. and generally has a limit after which it lapses (when the "natural causes" death becomes statistically more probable).
Some "investment" policies pay out a sum assured at maturity and a lesser sum if the policy holder dies before the term expiry.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?


Quality assurance = ISO 9000+.

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

There's no such thing as "ensurance".  I like "ensure", because to me it means to nail something down, to "make sure" that it's solidly there.

To "insure" implies hedging your bets.  To me it's like creating a backup plan for when and if the inevitable happens.

"Assure" is very close to "insure", but it's not creating anything, its supporting the existing facts or the infrastructure surrounding the issue.

There are dictionaries and there are dictionaries.  The interpretations that work for me are the visual, emotive descriptions that can be easily done in charades.  Even for tech stuff.

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

In my opinion, all three are about doing the same thing but differ in how you do it and what/who you do it to:
assure: I assure you that something will happen
ensure: I ensure that something will happen (and so I can assure you)
insure: I insure against something happening (so that when it happens as I ensured it would and assured you it would, I get a big payout - some people would call this fraud!)

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

I assure you that I will ensure your ability to get insured................................That's the way I see it.....

Tony

Tony Athens
http://www.sbmar.com

RE: Assure, Ensure, Insure - Which is correct?

The makers of ENSURE would like to ASSURE you that thier product provides complete, balanced nutrition in many great flavors. It’s nutrition for a healthier you (tm). They stand behind their claim to the the extent that they INSURE it.

Wheels within wheels / In a spiral array
A pattern so grand / And complex
Time after time / We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see / Their effects.

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