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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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some citations from the OED:
1727–41 Chambers Cycl. s.v. Orienting, In most religions, particular care has been taken to have their temples oriented.—St. Gregory Thaumaturgus is said to have made a mountain give way, because it prevented the orienting of a church he was building.
1842 Brande Dict. Sci. etc. 857/2 In surveying, to orient a plan signifies to mark its situation or bearing with respect to the four cardinal points.
1849 Ecclesiologist IX. 153 It was always thought preferable to orientate rightly where possible.
1866 Ecclesiologist XXVII. 158 Gaining the knowledge requisite for practical working... and orientating himself in general.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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A pa's nip is a vegatable. For a human to resort to the soil is to vegetate. So cogitate on that, dear Father Steve, and pray remember that language (unlike religion and other tosh grounded in a priori assumptions) is whatever we make of it 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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whatever we make of it And for a quick summary of the current state of play try the Cobuilder site, which has: "The evidence In the British parts of the Bank of English, `disorient' occurs 182 times, `disorientate' 308 times. In the American parts, `disorient' occurs 189 times, `disorientate' twice. ADVICE You can say something disorients you or disorientates you. In British English, disorientate is more common." http://www.cobuild.collins.co.uk/cgi-bin/wwatchlook
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old hand
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old hand
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I'm British, and I can't stand 'orientate' or 'disorientate'. I refuse to to use them in anything I write, if I can help it. But overwhlemingly, I think, the UK tends to use it, and one voice soon gets swamped...
A bit like the tendency to use 'myself' in business letters - but that thread's been done already.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Shanks, could your aversion to orientate have anything to with where you went to school? I find the word jarring "myself" even though NZ English follows British English quite closely. Given that my (single parent) father taught his children to read, I wondered if there might be a chance that "orient" is standard in the English taught on the subcontinent. Or am I, to use that wonderfully colourful, if politically incorrect, expression from the days of Raj, just going doolally?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
Or am I, to use that wonderfully colourful, if politically incorrect, expression from the days of Raj, just going doolally?
My father has no particular connection with the Raj or the subcontinent but uses doolally all the time as a semi-humorous equivalent of "round the bend". Why should it be considered politically incorrect?
Bingley
Bingley
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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doolally.Why should it be considered politically incorrect?
The suggestion was inspired by the discussion about Bombay/Mumbai - a name change perceived by many to have been motivated by concerns about political correctness. As "doolally" derives from Deolali, not far from Bombay/Mumbai, it occurred to me that using it might also prove injudicious. I love the sound of "doolally" and made the reference more in jest than in earnest.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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In differential geometry there is the definition of "orientation" of a surface. It means - more or less - that that surface has two faces . By my memories, I would say that - for example -
"the Moebius strip in a non-orientated surface"
Do you know what a Mobius strip is? Take a long rectangle of paper, give it a twist (just once) and then glue together the short opposite edges: now a ladybird can walk over it covering the whole surface , since there is no longer a side "up" and a side ""down". I like it very much (but I prefere the Klein bottle, harder to describe...)
Ciao
Emanuela
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
As "doolally" derives from Deolali
.. and are the inhabitants of this place notoriously mentally unstable, and possibly lurking in the genealogical hinterland of some of us?
Bingley
Bingley
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Carpal Tunnel
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