Canary in the Coal Mine

Noun Phrase · Slang & Abbreviations

Definitions

  1. An early warning sign that points to a larger hidden problem. In engineering slang, a canary in the coal mine is usually a small failure or metric change that reveals a deeper system issue before the full blast arrives.

    In plain English: An early warning signal for a bigger problem.

    Example: "The spike in queue retries was the canary in the coal mine for a much broader storage latency problem that had not yet surfaced on the main dashboard."

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