A warning shot is a military term describing harmless artillery shot or gunshot intended to call attention and demand some action of compliance. It is recognised as signalling intended confrontations on land, sea and air.
As an analogy, "warning shot" can be said of any action of declaration, especially a demonstration of power, intended or perceived as a last warning before hostile measures.
Famous quotes containing the words warning and/or shot:
“We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a “life-work” of teaching, of social work—we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this make-shift time filler of a job is our life work after all.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“Don’t sell the bearskin until you have shot the bear.”
—Swedish proverb, trans. by Verne Moberg.