Triggered

How to spell triggered

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce triggered

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does triggered mean?

1. verbCaused something to start or activate, especially a mechanism, alarm, or chain of events.
2. adjectiveSuddenly distressed or provoked by something that recalls an upsetting experience.

Triggered in a sentence

• verb

  The open window triggered the burglar alarm at midnight.

• adjective

  She felt triggered by the loud fireworks that reminded her of the accident.

• verb

  The merger triggered a wave of resignations across the company.

• adjective

  Many readers were triggered by the graphic description in the article.

Where does triggered come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This is the past tense and participle of the verb 'trigger', which itself comes from the noun for the small lever that fires a gun. That noun entered English in the early 1600s from the Dutch word 'trekker', meaning 'a puller', formed from the verb 'trekken', 'to pull' or 'to draw'; the same Dutch root gives us 'trek' for a long, pulled-out journey. English speakers reshaped 'trekker' into 'tricker' and then 'trigger', and by the 1900s the noun had spawned a verb meaning 'to set off or initiate', as a trigger sets off a shot. The participle 'triggered' then came to describe anything that has been set in motion, from an alarm to a chemical reaction. More recently it gained a colloquial sense of being suddenly upset or provoked by a reminder of something distressing. The doubled 'g' is the spelling trap: it follows the rule that a short, stressed vowel before a single final consonant doubles that consonant when '-ed' is added.

How the word is built

• trigger (a lever that releases a mechanism, from Dutch trekker: a puller)
• -ed (past-tense / participle / adjective suffix)