…while I’m doing grammar nazi rants, I might as well cover my #1 grammar pet peeve.

You’re not feeling “disorientated”.

That’s because “disorientated” isn’t a word.

The word you’re looking for is “disoriented”.

As in, “not oriented” – “dis” meaning “not”, and “oriented” meaning “oriented”.

When you are pointed in a known direction, or have been given basic introductory training on a topic, you are “oriented”, not “orientated”. Because “orientated” isn’t a word.

The process of becoming oriented is called “orientation”, and the possessive form of being oriented is to “have orientation”.

This is because we are taking the “-tion” suffix which gets added to words to describe the state of having or gaining that property (i.e it’s a noun→verb modifier), and adding it to the word “orient” (meaning “to point in a known direction”, which has then become a metaphor for “being given introductory training, i.e pointing you in the right direction to get started”)

The TLDR of which is that “orientation” is a constructed/modified word which describes the process of becoming oriented, or of being in an oriented state.

BUT: constructing it according to the normal rules causes a problem: “oriention” (or “orienttion”) doesn’t really scan well / sounds weird. It’s one of those fun little quirks of english where for that particular combination of prefix (orient) and suffix (-tion) we futz it a little bit so that our brains don’t scream at us that “oriention” sounds really weird.

An alternative would be to use the “-sion” suffix, but that would give you “orientsion” or maybe “oriension”, both of which have the same problem as “oriention” – the “nt” sound at the end of “orient” clashes with these suffixes phonetically*, so we futz it and sneak an extra “a” in there, hoping that nobody would notice. And apparently nobody did, because you all love to say “disorientated”. Even though it’s not a goddamn word.

But I would argue that we’re adding the extra syllable to the suffix, i.e the base word is still “orient”, but we’re adding a unique third “-ation” form of the “-tion”/”-sion” suffix, which (I think) only exists for this particular combination, to it.

Similarly, “disoriention” doesn’t scan well, so if you ever find yourself going through a process of becoming less oriented than you were previously, feel free to say you are going through the process of disorientation.

But at the end of it, you will be disoriented, not “disorientated”. Because “disorientated” isn’t a word.

* Personally I think “oriension” or “orienttion” isn’t really so bad. I could live with either of those. But I do see the problem and agree it’s not great. I don’t love it, but I dislike it less than I dislike “disorientated”. But really we have the correct solution already: “oriented”, and “orientation”. We just need people to stop using the incorrect “disorientated” (and I’ve seen “orientated”, too, ugh)

And while I’m doing grammar nazi rants, maybe I should quickly touch on my #2 pet peeve. Though this one is simply a spelling mistake.

You “loose” arrows, not your keys – You “lose” those, if you’re careless or unlucky.

Your belt might be loose, but it’s probably unlikely you’d lose it (you’d have to take it off for that to be possible).

You are a “loser”, not a “looser”: Your mum is “looser”, in comparison with less promiscuous women, but not in comparison with someone who has a better job (though it should be noted the two are not mutually exclusive, particularly since your mum is a whore, so she’s probably both looser and also a loser, but not if the person she’s being compared with is a total slut or doesn’t do any kegel exercises, in that case she would be a loser but not looser).

I’m glad we could finally clear these up!

Know that, right or wrong, if you do either of these things, I will judge you.

Thank you, come again.