Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

I read the following from the Online Etymology Dictionary, “by 2000, apparently a back-formation from conversation or an elaboration of converse. According to some, from black Amer.Eng.”

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

“Orient” was borrowed from French around 1740. As a verb, originally it meant ” to cause to face or point toward the east; specifically: to build (a church or temple) with the longitudinal axis pointing eastward and the chief altar at the eastern end” (Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary). Over time–and not much time–it came to mean “to set or arrange in any determinate position especially in relation to the points of the compass” (M-W again). I doubt that in the century or so before the emergence of “orientate” the ecclesiastical connotation was entirely lost.

And “orientate” did emerge. M-W Online dates it to 1848. It is likely a back-formation from “orientation,” which M-W puts at 1839. Objection to “orientate,” according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, began in 1945. I suspect that interaction between Yanks and Brits during WWII may have been the cause.

M-W lists and then summarily dismisses all criticisms of “orientate” but one: it is longer than “orient” by a syllable. And to this quibble they give short shrift. They cite several authors, most British, who have used “orientate,” including W. H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Tennessee Williams, and one Robert Morely, who probably thought he was being clever when he wrote: “I don’t want to suggest that Chinamen are less aesthetically orientated than I.” (He wrote that as recently as 1974, making him a grammatically-challenged troglodyte.)

So while “orientate” may be “not unremarkable everywhere” (a pretty phrase), it is well established and not incorrect.

Current score: 3 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

“Conversate” is not as widely accepted. It is considered slang by most, at least for now.

Actually, I think it would be fun to use “conversate” as a noun. Compare it to precipitate / precipitation. Precipitation can refer to the act of pricipitating and can also refer to the stuff itself that’s precipitating (e.g., rain, chemicals falling out of solution, etc.). Precipitate as a noun means, specifically, only the stuff itself (the actual raindrops, the resultant chemicals, etc.). I say we should use “conversation” to mean that act of talking, and “conversate”, as a noun, to mean the actual words or sentences, something like “HIs conversate was particularly well chosen.” As a noun, it could be pronounced con-ver-sayt, or con-ver-sit, just like precipitate.

Current score: 3 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

I mean, there are plenty of back-formations in standard English nowadays. In America, for example, people tend to use “orient” for the verbal counterpart of “orientation.” Yet, in Britain and the Commonwealths, people often use the back-formation “orientate.” There’s no reason for them to do this, since “orient” already existed to begin with, but “orientate” exists nonetheless. And it’s now so common, it’s unremarkable.

I hope this helps.

Current score: 3 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)