Failures and related topics
Ted W. Yellman · IEEE Transactions on Reliability · 1999
Failure is a general term which can legitimately apply to an unsatisfactory output of an item from any cause, to an unsatisfactory output caused by an internal condition, to an unsatisfactory output caused by an input condition, to material in an item being in a damaged or broken condition, to a software failure condition, or to an unsatisfactory memory state. Distinctions among these types of failures should be made by preceding the word failure with an appropriate adjective - not by creating definitions for failure itself which are impractical and unnecessarily narrow.