This might sound a bit silly, but I'm writing a program, and I'm looking for a way to name a variable which contains the entity that triggered a certain process.
I googled around a bit, and there are relatively few references to "triggerer", eg.:
Popular dictionaries I found contain no mention of this, nor anything reasonable in their respective pages for the word "trigger":
Is this an actual word? Or is there a better word? Alternatives I thought of or found were "activator", "starter", "causer" – but these sound kind if silly/not fitting.
EDIT: As some have pointed out, it might be helpful to clarify 2 things:
- In the title, I'm referring to a person, but in the body of the question, I'm referring to an entity. I apologize for the confusion, but it stems from the fact that the entity currently represents a person (always), but this might not be the case in the future. Between writing the title and writing the body of the question, I made the generalization in my mind without realizing it.
- In my specific case, it's desirable to distinguish the thing activating the trigger from the trigger itself, so just calling the "triggerer" a trigger is not appropriate.
Best Answer
"Triggerer" has been a word for the past 60 years or so, according to Google nGrams. To my native English speaking ear, it sounds like a perfectly natural construction, but slightly awkward-- it's a word I could see myself actually using in an appropriate conversation, but despite the construction being natural, the double "-er" ending would feel strange on my tongue and I wouldn't like it. (I wouldn't like it, but I'd still use it and understand it perfectly well)
That said, it is definitely a word. In the context of computer programming, it is also likely to be the best possible word-- if you have a programming concept called a "trigger" with a defined technical meaning, then something that activates the "trigger" must be the "triggerer".
On the other hand, in prose or other non-programing contexts, I might want to avoid the double "-er" ending just for the sake of elegance. I wouldn't have to avoid it, but I might try anyway. Your suggestion of "activator" would be a fine choice in many situations.
But for programming, you can stick with "triggerer" for maximum clarity.