Comment by virgil_disgr4ce

4 days ago

OK I have a genuine question outside the topic of TFA. Do people really prefer "orientate" over "orient"? This pattern baffles me. You don't get out of the subway and "orientate" yourself, you "orient" yourself.

I mean I'm perfectly aware that language is a descriptive cultural process etc etc but man this bugs the crap out of me for some reason

5 comments

virgil_disgr4ce

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moi2388  4 days ago

I absolutely get out of the subway and orientate myself.

If I orient myself I have not taken the subway but the orient express, I’m afraid..

nyeah  4 days ago

I think Americans tend to say "orient." I think English people tend to say "orientate."

  • kevin_thibedeau  4 days ago

    I vote for "eastify".

    • adrian_b  4 days ago

      Orient means "rising", so it can be used as an abbreviation when referring to the direction of the rising Sun.

      Occident means "falling", so it can be used as an abbreviation when referring to the direction of the falling Sun.

      "Orientate" is more correct etymologically to be used as a verb than "orient" ("rising"), and it comes from an expression that described how something is raised towards a certain direction.

      I think that the reason why the verb "orient" has come to be preferred by some was that "orientated" seemed like a mouthful, so it was abbreviated to "oriented", whence a verb "orient" has been back-formed.

      The guilty for "orientated" being so long is the habit of English of making verbs from Latin passive participles, instead of using just the verb stems, which leads to long verbal words and to clumsy English past participles derived from them. Latin also derived new verbal stems from passive participles, but those had a different meaning than the base verbal stem, being either frequentative or causative, so the extra length of such words was justified.