I used to be a language maven before I reformed and became a linguist. Now I don’t care what anyone does, I’ll just document it. But I used to decry the incorrect usage of others.
For example, the word ‘orientate’. I used to hate it! Just say ‘orient’! You don’t need to ‘orientate’ yourself! Just orient yourself.
But now trawling through the language archives, I’ve found that some people used to do the same thing to ‘jeopardise’.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994, pp.570f.:
jeopardize. Richard Grant White called jeopardize “a foolish and intolerable word” in 1879, and he was not the only one who thought so. A popular view among American critics in the 19th century was that the proper verb was jeopard, an older word which, according to the OED, had fallen into disuse by the end of the 1600s.
No one complains about ‘jeopardise’ anymore. And this is how it goes in language change. Would you jeopard the future of ‘orientate’? Me neither.
20 September 2007 at 7:42 am
Until last week I didn’t even realise that disorientated was a mutilation of disoriented. It took a French speaker to point it out, and now I hear it everywhere.
Strangely, disorientated sounds more logical to me than disoriented, whereas orient sounds better than orientate.
So, sorry Daniel, it seems like disorientated has crept into the lexicons of the younger generations without our knowing it and is here to stay.
Kylie F
21 September 2007 at 9:19 pm
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