An orienteer or orienteerer? Which one are you?

[yumyum]

Hi Folks,
Please can people help me with this debate!
Which one are you, and why?

The verb is 'to orienteer', therefore adding a suffix like -er normally gives a noun meaning soneone who does or is invovled with something; eg. to teach --> teacher.
Maybe it even should be orienteeror as in actor or inventor?
If you consider the verb 'to wash-up' the noun becomes 'washer-upper' but I think that would be taking it to far to add x2 -er!

[Nailest]

OED seems quite happy with "orienteer" as a noun, after "mountaineer", which it also lists as both verb and noun. First recorded use (of orienteer) as a noun in 1965, but a decade earlier for the verb. Anyone know of any earlier?

[DesignatedDriver]

as far back as i can remember its been orienteer

have never heard anyone describe themselves as orienteerer.

[yumyum]

I've been orienteering for 20yrs, and we've always used the word orienteerer.
In fact on the home page of this years o-ringen they favour orienteerer: "The best orienteerer in the world´s coming to O-Ringen Hälsingland. The tenfold World Champion Simone Niggli-Luder, 28, recently gave the green light for a start in the Super Elite class."
FVO's website uses "orienteerer", as does orienteeringonline.net and it's been used in 4 articles on this website.
So it does get used, and gramatically it is correct; is it more elloquent to use the shorter version, or in this age of texting is it easier to have shorter words?
Some words do sound better with the suffix -er, eg malingerer.

[Rookie]

"orienteerer" seems to be used by the Althletics club and any converts here

Defo should be orienteer.

[rocky]

flagchaser.

[Jenny E]

orienteer definitly but people from outside of orienteering seem to say orienteerer, which is natural to add an ER on the end of a word i 'spose

[mharky]

so your trying to define a word (which is already in the dictionary) based on Swedish, Slovian and the Fourth Valley website...

[rocky]

Or in finnish poetry...

[awk]

I've been orienteering for 20yrs, and we've always used the word orienteerer.

Yes, but in which country?

With greatest respect to the websites concerned, you've quoted two non-English sites (would you rely on British sites for correct French, German or Swedish spellings?) and one amongst over 100 club sites.

-eer is a standard suffix added to words to form the noun meaning somebody who performs is concerned with the original word, and the verbs describing the action they perform.

e.g.
engine -> engineer
mountain -> mountaineer
auction -> auctioneer
election -> electioneer
'boucan' -> buccaneer ('boucan' is a French word for a type of barbecue)
voluntary -> volunteer

Thus orient -> orienteer (both noun and verb).

AFAIK it is not grammatically correct to add another -er on to the end to form orienteerer, as the job of creating the noun of the person orienting (and orienteering) has already been done!

Hope that helps!

[bedders]

Someone decided to call me an orienteerist once...

[yumyum]

Awk; an excellent answer. Thank you.

I was starting to think that some people 'looked down' on other folks that didn't use the most common term
Since a child I've been an orienteerer in Northern Ireland, so I suppose it might count as foreign climes!

[yumyum]

Another, (?)interesting, aside I found was:

Orient as a verb means to "find direction" or "give direction." The noun form of this kind of orienting is orientation.

Sometimes people in their speech will form an imagined verb from orientation and say orientate. At best, orientate is a back-formation used humorously to make the speaker sound pompous. The correct word is the verb orient.


Incorrect: Jason is helping me to orientate the map.

Correct: Jason is helping me orient the map.

[Adventure Racer]

"Which one are you?"

None of the above

[graeme]

Unless you have a very old map, very dodgy compass, or obsession with 90 degree errors, the verb is septentrionate.

Graeme (runner)