Word.ws English Dictionary

disorient

/dɪsˈɔːɹi.ənt/

disorient verb: to cause to lose orientation or direction.

Verb

disorient (third-person singular simple present disorients, present participle disorienting, simple past and past participle disoriented)

  1. To cause to lose orientation or direction.
  2. To confuse or befuddle.

Examples of disorient in a sentence

  • Take saccadic masking: Without it, our experience would be full of disorienting and useless visual information.
  • There are few experiences more disorienting than hearing the words, “You have cancer.”
  • Getting Lost: Lovers engaged in nyctophilia can become disoriented in near-total darkness.

All 18 example sentences with disorient

Forms of disorient

third-person singular presentdisorients
present participledisorienting
past participledisoriented
pastdisoriented
alternative proscribed sometimesdisorientate

Origin of disorient

Borrowed from French désorienter.

Words formed from disorient

Questions about disorient

What does disorient mean?
Disorient means to cause to lose orientation or direction.
What part of speech is disorient?
Disorient is a verb.
How do you pronounce disorient?
Disorient is pronounced /dɪsˈɔːɹi.ənt/.
What is the past tense of disorient?
The past tense of disorient is disoriented.

Words near disorient in the dictionary

  1. disorganizedly
  2. disorganizer
  3. disorganizers
  4. disorganizes
  5. disorganizing
  6. disorient
  7. disorientate
  8. disorientated
  9. disorientates
  10. disorientating
  11. disorientation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disorient (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-disorient.wav.

Cite this entry: “disorient.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/disorient. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.