Orientation

How to spell orientation

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce orientation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does orientation mean?

1. nounThe relative position or alignment of something, or the act of finding one's bearings.
2. nounA session or programme that introduces newcomers to a job, course, or organisation.
3. nounA person's basic attitude, inclination, or set of preferences.

Orientation in a sentence

• The architect changed the orientation of the house so the living room faced the garden.

• All new staff must attend the orientation before their first shift.

• The company values a strong customer orientation in everyone it hires.

• The map lost its usefulness once we lost our sense of orientation in the fog.

• The university orientation covered library access, timetables, and campus safety.

• Her academic orientation leaned heavily toward research rather than teaching.

Where does orientation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin oriens, the present participle of oriri, meaning 'to rise', a verb used above all of the sun climbing into the sky each morning. Because the sun rises in the east, oriens came to name that compass direction, and 'the Orient' was simply the lands lying east of Europe. From this the verb 'to orient' developed, originally meaning to align a building or map so that it faced east, which was the traditional practice for churches whose altars pointed toward the rising sun. English borrowed 'orientation' from French in the early 1800s to describe the act of positioning or finding direction, and the sense soon broadened from physical bearings to figurative ones: settling someone into new surroundings, and a person's basic outlook or inclination. The spelling preserves the full 'orient' followed by the heavily used '-ation' ending, so the trap is simply remembering the unstressed middle vowels rather than any silent letter.

How the word is built

• orient (from Latin oriens: the rising sun, the east)
• -ation (noun of action/state)