I had an old accord that basically lost a cylinder (blew a valve or something) but could still drive down the road with check engine blinking because that cylinder was “misfiring.”
It happened far away from home too. I drove several dozen miles with my unintentional 3 cylinder swap.
To be fair, it can also mean "one of my fucking radiator fans is not responding quickly enough to computer control"
Which was not a fun experience when that happened to me, full fucking BEEP BEEP BEEP MOTHERFUCKER with a check engine and a STOP sign blaring on the digital system display panel, made me panic out of my mind because a radiator fan was a removed