English Explanatory Dictionary

facile

English dictionary entry

Meanings

adj
  1. Easy; contemptibly easy.
  2. Amiable, flexible, easy to get along with.
  3. Effortless, fluent (of work, abilities etc.).
  4. Lazy, simplistic, superficial (especially of explanations, discussions etc.).
  5. Of a reaction or other process, taking place readily.

Pronunciation

făsʹīl /ˈfæs.aɪl/ LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-facile.wav făʹsəl /ˈfæs.əl/ [ˈfæs.ɫ̩] En-us-facile.ogg /ˈfä.sʌɪl/

Word forms

facile more facile most facile

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French facile, from Latin facilis (“easy to do, easy, doable”), from Latin facere (“to do, make”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to do, put”) Compare Spanish and Portuguese fácil (“easy”), Catalan fàcil, Romanian facil. First use appears c. 1484 in a translation by William Caxton.

Related words

difficulty facilitate facilitation facilitative facilitator facilitatory facility

Derived words

facilely facileness facilization facilize overfacile unfacile
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on F Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary