The Eastern Origin of Disorientation

Hello,

I love when I discover the etymology of a word and then have an “aha moment” as it becomes ridiculously clear. Disorientation is one of those ones and I only worked it out this week despite learning how to orienteer when I was 15. Ah well, I got there in the end.

A sign in the pathless places

I was reading Samuel Johnson’s famous 1755 dictionary (part of my Summer research reading) this week and encountered the definition for disorientated [his spelling, not mine] – “turned from the East, turned from the right direction, thrown out of the proper place” – and suddenly it clicked – orient means east, that’s where disoriented comes from.

Samuel’s etymologies aren’t always totally correct (in fairness he was writing over two centuries ago) but this time he was on the nose.

A more recent source tells me that to be disoriented is to be confused as to direction. It entered English in the 1600s from désorienter in French, and means literally to turn from the east.

The prefix dis means “the opposite of”. Think about dislike, for example. But what about orient? It arrived in English as a word on its own in the 1700s when it meant rising in the east or to arrange something to face east. Again it came via French and before that from orientum in Latin. That word has its roots in the sun. Oriri means to rise in Latin and the sun rises in the east.

Now that’s all very well and yes orient gives us orienteering (the connection of orient to compasses and confusion in general dates to the mid 1800s). Orient even provides similar words in German but why east? When I learned about orienteering it was all about getting your bearings relative to north and if you lack a compass then surely people in the past could have found direction from where the sun set?

I wondered if this had something to do with praying towards Mecca, but of course that direction changes depending on the location of the faithful, it wouldn’t always be towards the east.

However I was on the right track, it comes back to religion, Christianity in this case. Christian churches are built with their “heads” towards the east. This is because in early Christian times the faithful prayed facing east. It was believed that the garden of Eden was in the east and the returning Christ would come from the east. I think burials are oriented in this way too. Although this is still observed by some, the vast majority of modern believers don’t worry about direction.

So the next time you find yourself to be disoriented, simply turn east and you’ll be fine.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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