[Hoss1193]

I started studying/playing HE about a year before SSHE came out, and I remember a clear distinction between "set" and "trips" from the very beginning, well before that book was published.

Can't say definitively exactly where I first read (or heard) the term, but I can say that both Lee Jones' Winning Low Limit Hold'Em 2nd Edition and Lou Krieger's Hold 'Em Excellence (both published in 2000) clearly made a distinction between "set" and "trips". Furthermore, each book discussed in a manner which implied that neither author came up with that distinction on their own.

In the process of writing this reply, looked through a couple of my earlier-published books. The use of the term "set" specifically in reference to 2 cards in the hole and 1 on the board appears as early as Bobby Baldwin's Limit Hold 'Em section in the original Super System (1978), but does not appear in Sklansky's original Hold 'Em Poker (1976). May very well be that Bobby made the first definition of the term in print, and probably existed as a standard term at the table long before that.