Over at the site of Tim Blair (Oppressor), an idiot reporter, attempting to feel Al Qaeda's pain, is justly mocked:

"My blindfolded eyes refused to adjust to the dark void that engulfed me. I was instantly disorientated..."

Allow me to pile on with a grammar flame. Does he think that adding the redundantly-superfluous "tate" to the perfectly-good word "disoriented" makes his outrageous hyperbole sound smarter and ooohhh so much more intellectual? It doesn't.

Brits like to add syllables to words (though they would probably like to think that it is we who subtract them.) "Disorientated" is the form of the word "disoriented" preferred in Britain, for some reason. Another example of this sort of thing is "to pressurize" (instead of "to pressure") as in "stop pressurizing me!" One more: "speciality" instead of "specialty."

On the other hand, our use of the word "gotten" when "got" would suffice strikes Brits as irritatingly archaic.

Well, at least in the case of "pressurize," that actually has a different meaning than "pressure."

I think of "pressure" as something caused by an external force, whereas "pressurize" means an internal pressure.