My writing professor said "orientate" in his lecture the other day, and today I read it in a textbook. Surely the "ate" ending is unnecessary and it should just be "orient"? Does this bug anyone else as much as it bugs me?
unfortunately, it is an accepted variant of 'orient'... despite it appearing as 'legal' in dictionaries it bugs me, too... if that helps... consoling hugs, maia
'Orientate' is the transitive form. I call it bumpkin English. The term would be 'orient' rather than 'orientate,' and 'oriented' rather than 'orientated.' However, the trend lately is to accommodate those who are consistent enough to make the same errors in large enough numbers by making these words real words. Then people who paid attention in English class and bothered to learn the right spelling or grammar rule are left to wonder why they now have to start doing it the wrong way like everybody else. 'Orientate' sounds gooberish to me. Always has, always will. And yet, it's been added to the dictionary.
The semantics, or at least the connotation, of orientate is a bit different than those for orient. If you're lost in the wilderness, you might look for the north star or the rising or setting sun to orient yourself. However, if you are new to a job or a university, there will be people assigned to help orientate you (help you through orientation). I don't care much for orientate myself, but I can't gripe too much about that kind of usage.
A good few years ago in my youth I was...shall we say, differently conscious, having partaken of certain prohibited substances. I was walking down the street with a friend of mine, similarly altered, when we heard sirens going off in the distance and getting closer. Sure enough, a few seconds later an ambulance flew past (not literally) at high speed overloading us both with sensory input. Having gathered my wits I turned to my friend and said "Those ambulirasancens were really loud!". He turned to me, white as a sheet and said "Ooh I feel all disentoriated." We spent a good half hour howling with laughter before moving on. To this day my first thought when I hear disoriented or disorientated my brain translates it as disentoriated...as for ambulance sirens well...........
