Warning Shot
Noun · Slang & Abbreviations
Definitions
An early signal or minor incident that should be treated as a serious warning before worse things happen. In engineering slang, teams regret ignoring warning shots because the bigger event often looks obvious in hindsight.
In plain English: An early warning that bigger trouble may be coming.
Example: "The partial data lag on Tuesday was a warning shot for the full replication failure they hit on Thursday."