disorient
Americanverb (used with object)
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to cause to lose one's way.
The strange streets disoriented him.
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to confuse by removing or obscuring something that has guided a person, group, or culture, as customs, moral standards, etc..
Society has been disoriented by changing values.
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Psychiatry. to cause to lose perception of time, place, or one's personal identity.
Etymology
Origin of disorient
1645–55; < French désorienter, equivalent to dés- dis- 1 + orienter to orient
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A friend found him minutes later, conscious but disoriented, and took him to the hospital, the prosecutor added.
“I feel relieved but also a bit disoriented,” said Beth Benike, the owner of Busy Baby, a Minnesota-based seller of baby products.
The mixture of digitally warped instrumentation that emphasizes its artificiality and cinematic string arrangements that evoke the melodrama of old Hollywood is pleasingly jarring and disorienting.
No one warned me about how disorienting that absence would be.
He’s particularly disoriented because it’s a tune from a musical he wrote.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
