Orient vs. Orientate

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Amy Winkle from Walderboro, Maine.

Well, what do you have on your mind today?

Well, I guess it’s been on my mind for a while. The first time I heard this word was in college. One of my friends told me she was disorientated. And I just cringed inside. I thought, why isn’t she using disoriented? And so, you know, I’d heard… Over the years, I’ve heard people use disorientated and orientated, and it just makes me cringe every time.

And just a few weeks ago, actually, I was proofreading a document for work and writing the text there. It said, orientate yourself by such and such. And I thought, oh, again. But this time, I had found your program and knew that I had someone I could ask about that word.

And you have someone who’s on your side.

Yeah. Oh, good. At least from my point of view. I agree with you. I mean, for a lot of people, Amy, it is kind of grating, you know. I mean, somebody who’s disorientated sounds extra disoriented, don’t they?

Yeah, exactly. They sound like they learn from stutters. It sounds like, yeah, they’re discombobulated or something. But I tell you, the simple and quick answer to that is that you’ll see orientate a lot more in Britain than you will here. There are a lot of people.

Yeah, it’s more of a Britishism. There are a lot of people here in the States who do use the word orientate, but there are enough of us out there who are a little bit bothered by it that I would tend to use orient and disorient.

Yeah, the usage numbers both in the United States and the United Kingdom are clearly in favor of the non-eight pronunciation, that is orient and disorient. Even in the UK, although disorientated and orientated are more common there, they’re still outnumbered by the orient and disorient, which is pretty interesting.

But the thing is, although you might have a, Martha, you might have a personal bias against the orientate.

I do. It is a real valid word. It is correct. There’s nothing wrong with using it, except if you know that you’re writing something for somebody who doesn’t like it.

Exactly. And I think that’s the point.

Yeah, it is irritating for some of us. I mean, not so much that we don’t understand. But, you know, Amy, for me, it reminds me of the little boy who said, I know how to spell banana. I just don’t know when to stop.

Yes, it is very much like that. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.

So, Amy, we have a support group of at least two here.

Yeah, and I’m sure there’s got to be others. Actually, yeah, I know there’s others out there. I know there are.

I would say that one thing in your position is someone who edits text. I gather that you do that, right? You edit text for other people? You probably are in a position to create a house style guide or add to a house style guide, and then you can simply fall back on it and say, well, our house style is to say disorient or orient, and so I’m going to change that.

And you might find that that gives you a little bit of extra weight because it shows them that you’ve thought about it and said, this is the way that we prefer that our publications be presented to the world.

And I do have that power.

You do. And you know what? The thing is, creating a style guide is one of those snowballing things that can really get out of hand, but I encourage you to just add every old thing you think of to it.

There you go, Amy. Changing the world one syllable at a time.

Hey, you know what? If you’re paid to edit text, you have the right, as long as you can justify it, to have an opinion on this and to force that opinion on other people.

You do. It’s very exciting. I’m glad to hear it.

Yeah, yeah. So go forth and purge the world of orientate.

I will.

All right. Thank you so much for your call.

You’re welcome. I was just going to thank you for at least agreeing with me. If I can’t really do anything about it, I at least agree that it’s irritating.

We can certainly do that.

Okay. Thanks for calling, Amy.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’ve got a question about right or wrong, you just want to get on the air and pee with us and see if you can get us to agree with your point of view, Martha is the one to call.

I’m probably going to disagree.

That’s right. No, the number to call, do call, please, 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. Or email us to words@waywordradio.org.