Word.ws English Dictionary

orientate

/ˈɒɹi.ənteɪt/

orientate verb: to face a given direction.

Verb

orientate (third-person singular simple present orientates, present participle orientating, simple past and past participle orientated)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, intransitive) To face a given direction.
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, reflexive) To determine one's position relative to the surroundings; to orient (oneself).
    • He[…]stood for a moment, orientating himself exactly in the light of his knowledge.1961, John le Carré, Call for the Dead
    • He came out of the station and took some time to orientate himself.
  3. To arrange in order; to dispose or place (a body) so as to show its relation to other bodies, or the relation of its parts among themselves.
    • The one preferred is to make the dominant forms first order, that is, orientated in such a way as to intersect both horizontal crystallographic axes.1848, James Dwight Dana, Manual of Mineralogy
  4. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, transitive) To position (something), to align relative to a given position.
    • Try to orientate your students towards the science subjects.
  5. (archaic) To move or turn toward the east; to veer from the north or south toward the east.

orientate meaning in Tamil and Kannada

orientate in Tamil

கிழக்குமுகமாக அமைவி, காலடி கிழக்கு நோக்கியிருக்கும்படி புதை, வடக்கஞ் செய், திசைமுகப்படுத்து

orientate in Kannada

ಹೊಂದಿಕೊಳ್ಳು, ಮೂಡ ಮೋರೆ ಮಾಡು, ಮೂಡಕ್ಕೆ ತಿರುಗು

Examples of orientate in a sentence

  • Polaroids over the eyepieces are orientated so extinguish the inner halves of the exit pupils.
  • The MPS is a male orientated and misogynistic environment filled with testosterone, notches on bed posts and conquests.
  • Between the prezygapophyses, the neural arch is flat and horizontally orientated to form an intraprezygapophyseal shelf (Fig 7A and 7F ).

All 10 example sentences with orientate

Synonyms of orientate

Forms of orientate

third-person singular presentorientates
present participleorientating
past participleorientated
pastorientated

Origin of orientate

From orient + -ate or a back-formation from orientation. Compare French orienter and Italian orientare.

Words formed from orientate

Questions about orientate

What does orientate mean?
Orientate means to face a given direction.
What is orientate in Tamil?
Orientate in Tamil is கிழக்குமுகமாக அமைவி, காலடி கிழக்கு நோக்கியிருக்கும்படி புதை, வடக்கஞ் செய். See Orientate meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is orientate?
Orientate is a verb.
How do you pronounce orientate?
Orientate is pronounced /ˈɒɹi.ənteɪt/ (UK).
What is the past tense of orientate?
The past tense of orientate is orientated.

Words near orientate in the dictionary

  1. orientalizing
  2. orientally
  3. Orientalogy
  4. orientals
  5. orientanol
  6. orientate
  7. orientated
  8. orientates
  9. orientating
  10. orientating response
  11. orientating responses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: orientate (page history and authors); orientate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); orientate (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

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

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