Failure Mode. A named way a system, pattern, process, projection, or organization can break, degrade, drift, or produce unsafe outcomes under pressure. A failure mode is useful only when it connects a condition to its consequence and expected response: what triggers it, what truth or safety it threatens, how the system should contain it, and what evidence would prove the response worked.
A useful failure mode names the governed fallback path, if any, that contains the failure without turning recovery into a policy bypass. It should also name the failure domain whose blast radius is allowed to absorb the failure.