"Memory safety" is a concept that predates rust, but was certainly popularized by it. It refers to statically eliminating a category of bugs - those related to

"Memory safety" is a concept that predates rust, but was certainly popularized by it. It refers to statically eliminating a category of bugs - those related to misusing memory - and all sources of undefined behavior. Rust code without unsafe blocks guarantees memory safety, and when you're writing unsafe blocks you're culturally expected to expose a safe-api that upholds rust's memory safety guarantees for users who don't themselves use unsafe blocks. Rust programmers (rustaceans, a pun on crustacean because the language mascot is a crustacean) tend to extol the virtues of memory safety [1], and are sometimes lax with using the word "safety" to refer to "memory safety". There are obviously non-memory-safety safety considerations as well (e.g. the other 1/3rds of security vulnerabilities. Or all the non-software uses of the word like making buildings that don't fall down). Personally I think it's usually pretty clear how the word is being used, and don't find it annoying. But then I'm a rust programmer. [1] E.g. pointing out that roughly 2/3rds of security vulnerabilities are caused by the lack of it.