When dealing with static electricity, what kind of failure caused by static discharge shortens the life of a component, and can cause intermittent errors?

Upset failure

Explanation:

Upset failure -

Any type of statistic damage in the component can lead to upset failures.

This type of condition arises during the stage in electrostatic discharge the amount of flow of current is not sufficient to  undergo the total failure and hence lead to the gate leakage which results in the improper functioning of the software , like the improper storage of data , is referred to as upset failure .

Hence, from the given information of the question,

The correct term is upset failure.