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FACILE
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Dictionary entry overview: What does facile mean?
• FACILE (adjective)
The adjective FACILE has 3 senses:
1. superficially impressive, but lacking depth and attention to the true complexities of a subject
2. performing adroitly and without effort
3. expressing yourself readily, clearly, effectively
Familiarity information: FACILE used as an adjective is uncommon.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Superficially impressive, but lacking depth and attention to the true complexities of a subject
Synonyms:
Context example:
a slick advertising campaign
Similar:
superficial (concerned with or comprehending only what is apparent or obvious; not deep or penetrating emotionally or intellectually)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Performing adroitly and without effort
Context example:
a facile hand
Similar:
effortless (requiring or apparently requiring no effort)
Derivation:
facility (skillful performance or ability without difficulty)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Expressing yourself readily, clearly, effectively
Synonyms:
eloquent; facile; fluent; silver; silver-tongued; smooth-spoken
Context example:
silver speech
Similar:
articulate (expressing yourself easily or characterized by clear expressive language)
Derivation:
facility (a natural effortlessness)
Context examples
He was merely facile and glib.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Before his facile perils and ready laugh, life was no longer an affair of serious effort and restraint, but a toy, to be played with and turned topsy-turvy, carelessly to be lived and pleasured in, and carelessly to be flung aside.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
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