trigger / trigger warning

A trigger warning is a notice posted at the beginning of material, such as that depicting rape or violence, that may act as a catalyst or trigger for those suffering post-traumatic stress, so that they can mentally prepare themselves to view the material or to avoid it altogether. In the university context, there have been a number of student requests that professors provide trigger warnings for any such material that the students will encounter during their course work. There is debate over whether or not such warnings are warranted or appropriate in the university environment, and if so, how and when they should be delivered and for what types of material.

Putting aside the argument (which is actually less about the warnings per se and more a proxy and rallying flag for progressive and conservative positions in a more general political debate), where and when did the term trigger warning arise?

The term comes, of course, from the trigger of a gun or other device. Trigger is a seventeenth-century borrowing from the Dutch trekker. While the spelling trigger appears in that century, tricker was the usual English spelling until the mid eighteenth century. The OED records this use of tricker from 1621, appearing in a book on fowling. In the following passage trycker or tricker refers to the device that springs a snare:

Then hard by this loope or swickel, shall there also be fastned with stronge Horse hayre within an Inch and a halfe of the end of the plant, a little broad thin trycker, made sharpe and equall at both ends after this proportion.

And then the bigger sharpe end of the Plant being thrust and fixed hard into the ground, close by the edge of the water, the smaller end with the loope and the tricker, shall be brought downe to the first bridge, and then the hoope made pearewise being laide on the bridge, one end of the tricker shall be set vpon the nicke of the hoope, and the other end against a nicke made on the small end of the plate, which by the violence and bend of the Plant shall make them stick and hold together vntill the hoope be mooued.

In a later passage, the book uses tricker in relation to firearms:

The next Engine to these is the Gun or Fowling Piece, which is a generall Engine and may serue for any Fowle great or little whatsoeuer […] as for the shape or manner of it, tis better it be a fier locke or Snaphaunce then a cocke and tricker, for it is safer and better for carriage, readier for vse & keepes the powder dryer in all weathers, whereas the very blowing of a coale is many times the losse of the thing aymed at.

The verb to trigger appears by the turn of the twentieth century in relation to firearms. The metaphorical use of the verb meaning to cause something to happen is in place by 1930.

The earliest use of trigger warning that I can find is in the Usenet discussion group alt.sexual.abuse.recovery for 19 September 1993. The post’s subject line is “Possible movie trigger warning,” and the text reads:

I saw "Stephen King's Sleepwalkers" this weekend and it contains a possible trigger.

*************SPOILER FOR DISCUSSION OF MOVIE CONTENT***************

If you like horror movies (and I know that many of you don't, but I do) this is a pretty decent horror movie, with one exception: the 2 monsters (sleepwalkers) in the movie are a mother and son who have an incestuous sexual relationship. I think that most non-survivors would find the “romantic” scenes between the two to be pretty distasteful, but for survivors I think that the scenes could be a very strong trigger. So, consider yourself warned.

Sources:

Markham, Gervase. Hungers Preuention: or the Whole Arte of Fowling by Water and Land. London: Augustine Mathewes for Anne Helme and Thomas Langley, 1621, 39–40, 43–44. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Mary. “Possible Movie Trigger Warning.” Usenet: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, 19 September 1993.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s. v. trigger, n.1, trigger, v.; third edition, 2022, s.v. trigger warning, n.

Image credit: Tomchen1989, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.