On a recent trip to New York City, I saw this sign at a worksite:
Of course, it was the word “orientated” that caught my eye. “Orientate” and its fraternal twin, “orient,” are part of an interesting history. They derive from the noun “orient,” referring to an easterly direction or region. A verb form arrived in the early 1700s, according to the OED, with the meaning, “To place or arrange (a thing or a person) so as to face the east; spec.(a) To build (a church) with the longer axis running due east and west, and the chancel or chief altar at the eastern end;(b) to bury (a person) with the feet towards the east.”
A hundred or so years later, the meaning was broadened: “To bring into a defined relationship with known facts, circumstances, etc.;” The OED‘s first quotation with this sense is from 1850: “It seems to me you might, in this way, orient yourself before the public.”
Along the way, a new noun, “orientation,” appeared–in the 1830s referring to churches facing east and in the 1870s to more general or metaphorical positioning. The next step, which came relatively quickly, was the back-formation of the verb “orientate,” meaning essentially the same thing as “orient.”
For some reason, “orientate” has been and is much more common in Britain than in the United States. Here’s the Ngram viewer chart showing the frequency with which the word is used in books from the two countries..
A sign of the word’s unusualness in the U.S. is the fact that the thirty-one most recent appearances in the New York Times are all from articles in its sporting division, The Athletic, about international, mostly English, football. For example, on February 25 of this year, Conor O’Neil writes, “Since his £51.4million ($65.5m) move to Chelsea, however, there’s a sense that Neto is still adapting to Maresca’s structured, methodical and possession-orientated approach.” I had to go back to 2021 to find a home-grown example, and that was in a quotation, all of which leads me to conclude that Times style prohibits “orientate.”
The Ngram Viewer chart indicates the word is used here, sparingly, but I confess that I’ve only been able to find one example, in a Merriam-Webster article about “orient” and “orientate.” It’s a line from a 1950 novel by Tennessee Williams, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone: “She was only standing there to catch her nervous balance, to orientate herself.”
For the record, Merriam Webster also quotes a 1940 W.H. Auden poem
What parting gifts could give that friend protection,
So orientated, his salvation needs,
The Bad Lands and the sinister direction?
(“Orientate” was apparently so entrenched in Britain that Auden used it even though “orient,” which would have better fit the poem’s iambic pentameter.)
The M-W article points out that “orientate” is only one of several words that over the years have acquired an extra, seemingly unnecessary, syllable, like “irregardless,” “conversate,” and “preventative.” (I would say the first two are uttered or written most often when people mock them, as oppose to actually use them.) Other examples of rather clunky back-formed verbs would be “commentate” (for comment) and “ambulate” (for walk).
In any case, the British fondness for “orientate” puts me in mind of a British person who recently complained to me about American English being too wordy, questioning why we say “elevator” when “lift” is much more efficient. I replied that they were barking up the wrong tree if they expected language to be either logical or consistent. If I could remember who the person was, I would have them chew on “orientate” and “aluminium.”
Getting back to the photo at the top, I’m pretty confident it’s not an example of British “orientate.” Rather it’s a back-formation from a predominantly American noun, “orientation,” referring to a training session or period for new employees, students, etc. “Orientate,” meaning to undergo orientation, doesn’t appear in any dictionaries I’ve found. But give it time.
notoneoffbritishisms.com 
The Brit-lingo in The Athletic is particularly vexing, then again MOST of the editing in The Athletic has been, is and will continue to be contrary to the canon of The Times Stylebook (assuming it exists in other than the in-house electronic form). The baronic former AME Al Siegal used to call the various Brit terms “creeping Britishisms.” He didn’t care for them. They aren’t creeping anymore, they are “orientating” in our direction.
One of my least favorite … the British use of the word “tie” to mean a series (home-and-away soccer matches, for example), or a single game as well. Of course, a tie here in the colonies means deadlock. But what do we know. Like the game of “soccer” (that’s a topic for another time), the Brits invented the language, so I guess the “tie” goes to the blokes.
Of course, as I may have mentioned before, in cricket a tie means the game ended with the scores equal, a draw means they’ve run out of time.
Almost all the “Brit-lingo” in The Athletic is written by . . . Brits. I’m sure that, due to the number of non-US writers, the NYT Style Guide (if it exists) is considerably relaxed. For example, MLB, NFL, NHL, and other initialisms are printed as such, rather than the stilted and outmoded “M.L.B.,” etc.
I believe ‘orientate’ is more common in spoken American English than written because of editors and style guides. I don’t know that it’s as common as in British English, but I do believe the Ngram data understates it a bit
<i>Other examples of rather clunky back-formed verbs would be “commentate” (for comment) and “ambulate” (for walk).</i>
Backformated?
have acquired an extra, seemingly unnecessary, syllable, like “irregardless,” “conversate,” and “preventative.”
“Preventative is a noun (something which prevents), whereas “Prevent” is a verb.
Much too often, I see phrases such as “preventative maintenance.” It grinds my teeth as much as “orientate” does. (Yes, I’m an American.)
Also adjective meaning preventive.
Good afternoon, Ben!
This all reminds me of Edwin Newman’s discussion of words with unnecessary extra syllables, like “preventative” (v. “preventive”). Newman even suggested that someone might decide to say “preventatative.” He called this “putting on the dog.”
Part of it, I suppose, is that I can’t think of a good noun or adjective form for the verb “orient.” “Orientive”?
As you say, anyone who expects language to be logical is dreaming. I learned that “piano” and “pianist” have quite different pronunciations – aside from their last syllables.
In the 90s, people started telling me that was illogical, and that “pe-AN-ist” was the only proper, logical, correct way. But if I go back and listen to broadcasts from many years ago, “PE-un-ist” was quite common, even among the most erudite, fastidious announcers.
I need to re-learn Google Ngram, but I want to see the difference between “orientate” and “orient,” both in US and UK usage.
Best regards!
Tim Orr
In fact “oriented” is much more popular than “orientate” in both the UK and the US, according to the ngram. So it really doesn’t make sense to say there’s a “British fondness for orientate”; it’s just less disfavored by the British than by the Americans. Robert Burchfield made a note on “orientate” in his 1998 revision of Fowler, and shrugged: “In practice I have decided to use the shorter form myself in all contexts, but the saving is not great. And one can have no fundamental quarrel with anyone who decides to use the longer of the two words.”
Surely I can’t be the only one who chuckled when the spainish transaltion in the sign used the word “orientarse”.
For some irrational reason, “orientate” really annoys me, and I hear it all the time from my British wife. (And, no, I don’t think that’s why it annoys me.) It just seems contrived, like all the basketball commenters (or, I suppose, commentators) who say “utilize” or “facilitate” instead of “use” and “pass.” @ktschwarz– Where do you see that orient is more popular in the UK? I have never in my entire life heard a British person say “orient” as a verb; they ALWAYS say “orientate.” Even my brother, who has lived in London going on 30 years now, says “orientate” rather than “orient.”
As I said, Google ngrams. Caution: a significant fraction of “oriented” is in the fixed phrase “object-oriented programming”, but you can filter that out by searching for phrases such as “is orient(at)ed” or “family orient(at)ed”, and “oriented” still wins in British English.
Google is quick but it isn’t totally reliable on sorting its sources by country, so I also checked the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Global Web-Based English. “Oriented” is in the lead over “orientated” in every English-speaking region, but by very different ratios: less than 2:1 in the UK and Ireland vs. almost 20:1 in the US.
You can also do a site search for “oriented” at site:bbc.co.uk, site:guardian.co.uk, etc. Google doesn’t give hit counts anymore (and they were always unreliable), but you’ll find news stories such as In a tribute released by West Midlands Police last week, Mr Graham’s family described him as “a loving, caring, family-oriented person”.
As a London resident for 37 years, I hear and read ‘orient/orienting/oriented’ probably about as much as ‘orientate/orientating/orientated’ I always use the ‘orient’ form for the verb. I am embarrassed by what Ben’s and @KTSchwartz’s Google Ngrams have revealed. Before reading this blog thread, if anyone had asked me, my prejudice would have made me assume that Americans add the superfluous syllable to ‘orient’ more than the British do.
I am reminded of the time a journalist friend, who liked to poke fun at Americans, showed me the word ‘burglarize’ (about 1990). We wondered why Americans needed it when British ‘burgle’ was sufficient and concluded that they like to grandify words, such as in their use of ‘automobile’ where we would use ‘car’. We laughed at them. Now I am cringing because the British have been shown to be the ones inserting an unnecessary syllable.
And yes, @David Ballard, I am with you wholeheartedly regarding ‘utilise/utilize’ and ‘facilitate’. Some people believe they will be thought better of for what Dr Samuel Johnson called ‘sesquipedalianism’ (using words one-and-a-half feet long).
Is orientate considered by Americans to be British English, or a malapropism?
This American considers it a malapropism. My mother always corrected us if we said “orientate”.
As a 65 years old Englishman, I can’t recall having heard any variant of the word being used in conversation. “Orientation” may describe the process of being introduced to the ways of a new workplace, particularly in an educational setting. When I was younger “the Orient” seemed to be an alternative name for China.
Do new employees in Asian companies get occidented before they start work?