the.com/orient
To find your bearings, named after the one direction that stays put: sunrise.
means To figure out your position or direction relative to something fixed, or more broadly, to adjust and align yourself to a new situation.
from From Latin 'oriens,' meaning 'rising,' the present participle of 'oriri' (to rise) — originally used for the rising sun, and by extension, the East where it rises. Old maps and churches were literally built or aligned facing East, toward the Orient; to 'orient' something was to position it correctly relative to that fixed point, before the word loosened into its modern sense of simply finding your bearings at all.
- root meaning
- from Latin oriens, rising sun
- old maps
- east was once drawn at the top
- compass logic
- you orient by fixing east, not north
- figurative use
- now means getting any bearings at all