Crossword Dictionary

What's The Definition Of Facility?

\Fa*cil"i*ty\, n.; pl. {Facilities}. [L. facilitas, fr. facilis easy: cf. F. facilit?. See {Facile}.] 1. The quality of being easily performed; freedom from difficulty; ease; as, the facility of an operation. The facility with which government has been overturned in France. --Burke. 2. Ease in performance; readiness proceeding from skill or use; dexterity; as, practice gives a wonderful facility in executing works of art. 3. Easiness to be persuaded; readiness or compliance; -- usually in a bad sense; pliancy. It is a great error to take facility for good nature. --L'Estrange. 4. Easiness of access; complaisance; affability. Offers himself to the visits of a friend with facility. --South. 5. That which promotes the ease of any action or course of conduct; advantage; aid; assistance; -- usually in the plural; as, special facilities for study. Syn: Ease; expertness; readiness; dexterity; complaisance; condescension; affability. Usage: {Facility}, {Expertness}, {Readiness}. These words have in common the idea of performing any act with ease and promptitude. Facility supposes a natural or acquired power of dispatching a task with lightness and ease. Expertness is the kind of facility acquired by long practice. Readiness marks the promptitude with which anything is done. A merchant needs great facility in dispatching business; a banker, great expertness in casting accounts; both need great readiness in passing from one employment to another. ``The facility which we get of doing things by a custom of doing, makes them often pass in us without our notice.'' --Locke. ``The army was celebrated for the expertness and valor of the soldiers.'' ``A readiness to obey the known will of God is the surest means to enlighten the mind in respect to duty.''