Word of the Day Archive
Saturday September 4, 1999
facile \FAS-uhl\ , adjective:
1. Easily done or performed; not difficult.
2. Arrived at without due care or effort; lacking depth; as, "too facile a solution for so complex a problem."
3. Ready; quick; expert; as, "he is facile in expedients"; "he wields a facile pen."
The colt supplying that evidence was Rock of Gibraltar, who recorded yet another facile victory at Group One level.
-- J. A. McGrath, "Rock thriving on success", Daily Telegraph, June 18, 2002
Today, the nuclear projects in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea forbid the facile conclusion that the atomic weapons age is conclusively ended.
-- Abba Eban, Diplomacy for the Next Century
This is a very facile sort of speculation not supported by the facts or by common sense.
-- Roberto González Echevarría, The Pride of Havana
Some years before he had earned small sums scribbling paragraphs for the front page of the Civil and Military Gazette, whilst admitting to his sister Jane that a dissertation on the uselessness of the Viceroy came readily to his facile pen.
-- Frances Spalding, Duncan Grant: A Biography
He had a fluent, facile style with the brush, but (much more significantly for Yeats) he painted the visions which rose up before him like emanations from some alternative reality.
-- Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats
Facile derives from Latin facilis, "easy."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for facile
