disoriented

adjectiveB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,591 of 15,258leans spoken

Disoriented means having lost your bearings, or your sense of what is going on. Awake, and not sure where or when.

It describes the state after a blow to the head, a long flight or waking in a strange room. Medicine uses it precisely, and a patient who is disoriented in time and place is showing a specific symptom. British English also says disorientated, with an extra syllable, and both are correct. The verb is disorientate or disorient, and the noun is disorientation.

Definitions of disoriented

1adjectivedisorientedHaving lost your sense of direction or of what is happening.B2
“He woke disoriented and could not find the light.”

Where it comes from

From dis + oriented or disorient + ed.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 26 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

disoriented in the wild

The blindfolded child is then spun around until disoriented.
Pin the tail on the donkey
In psychology, confusion is the quality or emotional state of being bewildered or disoriented.
Confusion
To some fans, Jackson appeared more disoriented in the first concert, as he only did one short moonwalk and improvised the ending of the "Billie Jean" performance.
Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration
The high acceleration caused him to become disoriented and lose track of how close he was to the ground.
2007 Blue Angels South Carolina crash

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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