ensure

ensure, insure, assure, secure are comparable because they all carry the underlying meaning to make a person or thing sure. Ensure, insure, and assure all indicate a making of an outcome or event sure, certain, or inevitable as a consequence or concomitant.

Ensure in such use may come very close to guarantee

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good farming practices that go far toward ensuring good harvests

}

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certain rules of conduct for the purpose of ensuring the safety and victory of the absent warriors— Frazer

}

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for the remainder of his life he so constrained the expression of his thoughts as to ensure his safety— H. O. Taylor

}

Insure is often interchangeable with ensure

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Shipbuilders, who wished to insure a profitable career for their vessels— Amer. Guide Series: Mich.

}

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the structural division of the buildings, with no more than four apartments opening on any hallway, insures privacy and quiet— Amer. Guide Series: N. Y. City

}

but it is also the general word for reference to making certain arrangements for indemnification for loss by contingent events

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to insure the car against theft and fire damage

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Assure may in its more general use be indistinguishable from ensure and insure

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protected by game laws and reared in state hatcheries, this bird is now assured a permanent place among the game birds of the state— Amer. Guide Series: Tenn.

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policies and plans for assuring the necessary labor force for defense and essential civilian production— Current Biog.

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but distinctively it more definitely expresses the notion of removal of doubt, uncertainty, or worry from a person's mind

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I assured him that I was far from advising him to do anything so cruel— Conrad

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assured the inhabitants that France intended to grant autonomy— Current Biog.

}

Secure implies purposive action to ensure safety, protection, or certainty against adverse contingencies

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lock the door to secure us from interruption— Dickens

}

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one other battalion moved up to secure the first battalion's flank— Bernstein

}