I’ve been watching MAFS UK, and they all say “orientated” and it hurts my ears. Why? Is this like how they’ll shoehorn extra vowels into words like “colour”? What are they doing over there?

I looked it up:

“The word orientated is a meaningless variation on the word, and it is most likely the result of people thinking that "orientated" is the past verb form of the noun "orientation." Instead, the verb form is oriented.”

I was reminded of this when my phone said “forecasted”. Isn’t “forecast” enough? Is “forecast” only a noun?

I’m less certain about this one. I’m making up sentences with forecast/forecasted and now nothing sounds right.

Aaaaaaaugh! Perfidious Albion!

@MookyTroubadour

The traditional past tense of cast is cast, like other originally verbal monosyllables ending in -st (e.g. burst, cost; but not verbs derived from nouns or adjectives, like dust, mist, best), and forecast should follow the same pattern, being just "cast" with a prefix.

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@DavidSalo that’s it. We’re storming Merriam Webster’s castle at dawn! :)

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