ORIENTATION

orientation

(noun) the act of orienting

orientation

(noun) a person’s awareness of self with regard to position and time and place and personal relationships

predilection, preference, orientation

(noun) a predisposition in favor of something; “a predilection for expensive cars”; “his sexual preferences”; “showed a Marxist orientation”

orientation

(noun) an integrated set of attitudes and beliefs

orientation

(noun) position or alignment relative to points of the compass or other specific directions

Source: WordNet® 3.1

Etymology

Noun

orientation (countable and uncountable, plural orientations)

(countable) The determination of the relative position of something or someone.

(countable) The relative physical position or direction of something.

(uncountable) The construction of a Christian church to have its aisle in an east-west direction with the altar at the east end.

(countable) An inclination, tendency or direction.

(countable) The ability to orient.

(countable) An adjustment to a new environment.

(countable) An introduction to a (new) environment.

(education) Events to orient new students at a school; events to help new students become familiar with a school.

(typography, countable) The direction of print across the page; landscape or portrait.

(analysis, differential geometry, countable) The choice of which ordered bases are "positively" oriented and which are "negatively" oriented on a real vector space.

(analytic geometry, topology, countable) The designation of a parametrised curve as "positively" or "negatively" oriented (or "nonorientable"); the analogous description of a surface or hypersurface.

Antonyms

• disorientation

Source: Wiktionary

O`ri*en*ta"tion, n. Etym: [Cf. F. orientation.]

1. The act or process of orientating; determination of the points of the compass, or the east point, in taking bearings.

2. The tendency of a revolving body, when suspended in a certain way, to bring the axis of rotation into parallelism with the earth's axis.

3. An aspect or fronting to the east; especially (Arch.), the placing of a church so that the chancel, containing the altar toward which the congregation fronts in worship, will be on the east end.

4. Fig.: A return to first principles; an orderly arrangement. The task of orientation undertaken in this chapter. L. F. Ward.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition