Silent Failure
Noun · Slang & Abbreviations
Definitions
A failure mode where something stops working correctly but does not clearly announce that it failed. In engineering slang, silent failures are usually treated as design flaws because they hide operational truth.
In plain English: A failure that does not clearly reveal itself when it happens.
Example: "The sync job had a silent failure path where partial writes looked like success, which made the eventual cleanup far worse."