triggering

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of trigger.

   Certain foods are triggering her allergic reactions more often lately.

   Triggering the safety mechanism by accident shut down the entire assembly line.

   Note

   One spelling does two verbal jobs. After be it is the progressive (foods are triggering reactions). At the head of a phrase it is a gerund that still takes a direct object (triggering the mechanism). Once it takes of instead, as in the triggering of the landslide, it has become the plain noun. The verb behind it can fire a weapon, set something off or provoke a person, and it also works without an object: an alarm triggering.

2. 2
   adjective

   Serving to set off or initiate an event or process.

   The report identified the triggering factors behind the financial collapse.

   A single triggering remark set off the whole argument.

   Similarcausal

   Note

   Two uses run side by side. In the neutral one, a triggering factor or triggering event is simply what sets something off, and the word sits before its noun without degrees. The other carries the verb's emotional sense of provoking distress and can be graded like an ordinary adjective. Tiffany Hsu wrote in 2021 that saliva was once "considered so triggering" that KFC dropped its catchphrase.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The starting or setting in motion of an event or process.

   Geologists linked the triggering of the landslide to days of heavy rain.

   Engineers studied the triggering of the safety valve under high pressure.

   Similaractivation, initiation

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