Incident and anomaly just are weasel words for failure

When something embarrassing happens, we may hear euphemisms from management and legal downplaying the situation. On Saturday, April 20th SpaceX had a ‘problem’ during a test. Yahoo reported Incident on SpaceX pad could delay its first manned flight, while Gizmodo reported SpaceX’s Crew Dragon suffers ‘anomaly’ during testing at Cape Canaveral. Forbes more clearly reported SpaceX’s Crew Dragon suffers ‘anomaly’ and may have exploded during a test.

Incident means something happened; anomaly means something unexpected happened; failure means something failed to function. This ‘incident’ ended with a large cloud of red smoke.