# Is "Orientated" really a legitimate word? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 8, 2005, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478 "2005-03-08T02:24:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/1 "2005-03-08T02:24:09Z")
Like it says. Isn’t “oriented” actually correct for every use of “orientated”? Or are there some circumstances of which I am unaware which call for the use of “orientated”? I know the word root is derived from “east”, but that hasn’t helped me figure out this conundrum. I thought to ask this of Mr. Language Person, but he’s on sabbatical. So I ask our doper language experts. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/2 "2005-03-08T02:30:14Z")
I think it’s more accepted in Britain and Australia. Kinda like “aluminium.” ---
**Author:** ![BethCro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cdc98d/32.png) [@BethCro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BethCro)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/3 "2005-03-08T02:36:47Z")
As an American who has been arguing this question with my English exhusband for the past week, I can’t wait to see how this plays out! I’ve googled, but can’t find a definitive answer, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the dopers prove ‘Oriented’ wins out. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/4 "2005-03-08T02:41:31Z")
The Encarta dictionary says orientate has been around since the 19th century as a back-formation from orientation, but also says careful writers avoid it. The American Heritage says that it means to face toward the east, which is a bit more precise than merely to orient oneself, but I doubt it ever gets used in that meaning more than one in a thousand times. I’m fairly permissive for new meanings but this one grates on me. I wouldn’t use it or recommend its use as a pure synonym for orient, but it will certainly be acceptable in a couple more decades. Just like the phrase a couple more. ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/5 "2005-03-08T02:43:52Z")
Actually, “orientate” is the correct word. “Orient” when used to mean “orientate” is used figuratively, as the word itself means rising from the East or East. I know it’s common parlance to talk of one who is “well oriented.” And, I guess, the word has now come to mean the same as “orientate,” but that was not the original definition. [http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=orient](http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=orient) ---
**Author:** ![BethCro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cdc98d/32.png) [@BethCro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BethCro)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/6 "2005-03-08T02:53:14Z")
Yes, my ex is in the ‘it is accepted English and English is a living language’ camp. His campsite is the ‘Americans don’t know how to speak English’ tent, with particular emphasis on the ‘aluminium/aluminum’ sleeping bag. I think he’s still just annoyed that I was pronouncing ‘eviscerate’ with a soft C (which is correct) and he was pronouncing it incorrectly (with a hard K). Um, eviscerate, a very good word indeed, came up in a conversation about my City of Heroes powers. Just wanted to clarify - the ‘orientated’ discussion here hasn’t turned that nasty yet that evisceration is called for. But if he tells me “The English speak English, and if you Americans want to have your own dialect, that’s fine by me” one more time … the knives are coming out. :: sometimes I realise exactly why he IS my exhusband:: ---
**Author:** ![pokey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pokey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pokey)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/7 "2005-03-08T03:21:06Z")
Orientate and disorientate bother me and my Oxford bothers me According to Oxford Orientate = Orient (probably a back-formation of orientation.) Disorientate = confuse. Disorient = disorientate (French desorienter) Honestly. That has been irritating me for a few years. ---
**Author:** ![hermann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b487fb/32.png) [@hermann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hermann)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/8 "2005-03-08T04:03:23Z")
During map-reading exercises we used to orientate the map, as in the following example: > [@](#): > > The Little Book of Orienteering Techniques > … issue … orientate your map and check everything off against that orientation. > … First of all orientate your map and try to match any line features … > [www.nzorienteering.com/little\_book/littleint.htm](http://www.nzorienteering.com/little_book/littleint.htm) - 7k - Cached - Similar pages ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/9 "2005-03-08T04:09:45Z")
> [@barbitu8](#): > > Actually, “orientate” is the correct word. “Orient” when used to mean “orientate” is used figuratively, as the word itself means rising from the East or East. I know it’s common parlance to talk of one who is “well oriented.” And, I guess, the word has now come to mean the same as “orientate,” but that was not the original definition. [http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=orient](http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=orient) Since the page you link to has no dates on it at all, I don’t understand how it’s supposed to confirm your assertion. Which appears to be flatly wrong. The OED lists the first use of both orientate and orientation as 1849. Orientate has three meanings listed, the first two given as equal to orient, the last one the same as the American Heritage definition I gave earlier. Almost every sense of orient is hundreds of years older, including to face the east. Orient in the sense of properly positioned is from 1850, but no example of orientate in that meaning is given before the 1880s. I don’t see any reasonable argument from the OED entries to affirm that orientate came first, or that orient derived from it in any way. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/10 "2005-03-08T05:28:41Z")
On older engineering drawings I see the word “orientated” all the time. I used to think it was a gaff, but no, it is an accepted usage, to be found in _Machinery’s Handbook_ and other references. But it still annoys the piss out of me, as does “supposibly”. Eeeegghh! Stranger ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/11 "2005-03-08T07:57:34Z")
> [@Stranger On A Train](#): > > But it still annoys the piss out of me, as does “supposibly”. Eeeegghh! ‘Supposably’ is actually a real word. But I guess you wouldn’t want any engineering to be particularly supposable 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Popup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/12 "2005-03-08T12:02:39Z")
My English-language guru [Michael Quinion](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ori1.htm) has the following to say: > [@](#): > > We have a minor oddity here, in that both orient and orientate come from the same French verb, orienter, but were introduced at different times, the shorter one in the eighteenth century and the longer in the middle of the nineteenth. There’s been a quiet war going on between the two of them ever since. I tend to use oriented and orientated pretty indiscriminately myself, choosing the shorter one when it seems to fit the flow of the sentence. Robert Burchfield, in the Third Edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, says ‘one can have no fundamental quarrel with anyone who decides to use the longer of the two words’. But all this is a British view, since here orientated is common; in the US it is less so and considered much less a part of the standard language. So, as always, it’s as much a case of who you are writing for and where you are doing so. He doesn’t actually mention his sources, but he’s normally pretty thorough in these matters. Personally I prefer the shorter form, much to the chagrin of my mother-in-law. (You wouldn’t catch me saying aluminum though.) ---
**Author:** ![Arwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/51bf81/32.png) [@Arwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arwin)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/13 "2005-03-08T12:28:43Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > ‘Supposably’ is actually a real word. But I guess you wouldn’t want any engineering to be particularly supposable 😉 Supposedly is the one I’d have thought of. But if supposably is also a real world, then there is also a chance that the Brits would use supposibly. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Faldage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Faldage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Faldage)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/14 "2005-03-08T12:29:00Z")
Say what you will, _orientate_ has always been a verb, _orient_ is a verbed noun. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/15 "2005-03-08T12:35:04Z")
The editor at the last magazine I worked on decried “orientate” as a nefarious Americanism, and “orient” was the order of the day. My current editor seems to think “orient” is the nefarious import. Go figure (there’s another one)… ---
**Author:** ![Arwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/51bf81/32.png) [@Arwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arwin)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/16 "2005-03-08T12:39:28Z")
> [@Faldage](#): > > Say what you will, _orientate_ has always been a verb, _orient_ is a verbed noun. I think the strength of orientate is that it more clearly distinguishes itself from the noun. I think it has to do partly with that its use in praesens isn’t that common, so that it starts getting confused between the following two word categories. plant - plantation orient - orientation orientate - orientations frustrate - frustration However, the past tense is often a good ‘taste’ test: planted - plantation oriented - orientation orientated - orientation frustrated - frustration Based on this list, I’d instinctively say that oriented is better than orientated. But rather than go by instinct, I prefer using google. [Oriented gives 28.300.000 hits](http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=oriented&lr=) and [orientated only 1.580.000](http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=orientated&lr=). In fact, orientate renders only 316.000 hits. (use that as you please, **BethCro** 😉 ) ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/17 "2005-03-08T14:06:51Z")
There’s nothing like a British ex to make every Britishism grate on one’s nerves. ---
**Author:** ![Scribble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scribble/32/3317_2.png) [@Scribble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scribble)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/18 "2005-03-08T16:05:34Z")
> [@Faldage](#): > > Say what you will, _orientate_ has always been a verb, _orient_ is a verbed noun. A “verbed noun”? So we have the verb “to verb” now? I realize that may well be the case. English has a lot of nouns that it turns into verbs (like “to clock”) and plenty of verbs it turns into nouns (like “access”.) I was unaware that “verb” was one of those nouns that have been verbed. Has “noun” been verbed to give us the verb “to noun”? So, do we now have the adverb “adjectively”? Or the adjective “adverbish”? Could we speak of '“adjectiving” or “adverbing” verbs and nouns, including our verbed nouns or nouned verbs? Since many adjectives are actually adjectived nouns, and many of our adverbs are adverbed adjectives, do we have lots of adverbed adjectived nouns? How about adverbed adjectived nouned verbs? ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/19 "2005-03-08T16:57:27Z")
I’ve always figured that orientated was gaining popularity because of the increasing popularity of the event called orienteering, and that somehow, the two were ascending together in numbers of users. Maybe I’m totally wrong there. On the other hand, one that grates on me is “eksetera.” It is also written incorrectly at times as ect., presumably because the writer is trying to shorten a mispronounced term to begin with. Why doesn’t the world just speak the way I speak, and stop with all these random errors? xo C. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478/20 "2005-03-08T17:02:26Z")
> [@CC](#): > > On the other hand, one that grates on me is “eksetera.” It is also written incorrectly at times as ect., presumably because the writer is trying to shorten a mispronounced term to begin with. Why doesn’t the world just speak the way I speak, and stop with all these random errors? xo C. Lax-adasical. ::shudder:: Ugh. My boss likes to say “er-jo” and “pentlement”. But since English is a second language for him, I give him a pass…until he starts yelling for no reason. :rolleyes: His e-mails are an incomprehensible mess of run-on sentances and sans punctuation, though. Stranger [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-orientated-really-a-legitimate-word/293478.md?page=2)