'safety-enhancing' is a compound of 'safety' and 'enhancing'. 'safety' originates from Old French, specifically the word 'safeté' (also attested as 'sauveté'), where 'safe' meant 'protected, free from danger'. 'enhance' originates from Old French 'enhauncer' (later 'enhancer'), ultimately from Latin via Late Latin 'inaltare', where 'in-' meant 'in/on' and 'altus' meant 'high', giving the sense 'to raise' or 'to make higher'.

'safety' developed into Middle English as 'safeté'/'safte' and became the modern English 'safety'. 'enhance' passed from Old French 'enhauncer' into Middle English and eventually the modern English 'enhance'; the compound 'safety-enhancing' is a modern formation combining the noun and the present participle to form an adjective.

Individually, 'safety' originally meant 'freedom from danger' and 'enhance' meant 'to raise or increase'. Over time, combined as 'safety-enhancing' it came to mean 'having the quality of increasing safety'—a descriptive, often technical adjective.