FACILE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Facile

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/fˈæsəl/ Listen

adjective

Facile adj.

Easy to be done or performed: not difficult; performable or attainable with little labor. "Order... will render the work facile and delightful."

Easy to be surmounted or removed; easily conquerable; readily mastered. "The facile gates of hell too slightly barred."

Easy of access or converse; mild; courteous; not haughty, austere, or distant; affable; complaisant. "I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet."

Easily persuaded to good or bad; yielding; ductile to a fault; pliant; flexible. "Since Adam, and his facile consort Eve, Lost Paradise, deceived by me." "This is treating Burns like a child, a person of so facile a disposition as not to be trusted without a keeper on the king's highway."

Ready; quick; expert; as, he is facile in expedients; he wields a facile pen.

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Etymology of 'Facile'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Facile" Quotes from Famous Books

... the Washington (D.C.) Republic: "Mr. Lanman is well known both in England and America as the writer of some of the most delightful descriptive books in the English language. To the facile wielding of his pen he adds an equally adroit and skilful use of the pencil, and his admirable results in these combined pursuits won for him from his friend and brother of the quill, Washington Irving, the apt and deserved soubriquet of 'the picturesque explorer of America.' To the ...

— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... an insult to her soul. And ever and again would come the draw of him, till she thought he must be evil to have such power over her. All that was most firmly established in her mind was rocking. His romance and adventure were battering at the conventions. 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. "Therefore, play!" was ...

— Martin Eden • Jack London

... you how to be victorious. However, perseverance granted, the hour will come when an article of yours finds its way to the composing room. A day of ecstasy, upon which every disappointment is forgotten and the way forward seems straight and facile! ...

— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... was secular. Mrs. S. was deeply distressed about the boot business. She consoled me by saying that many would be glad to have such feet whatever shoes they had on. Unfortunately, fishers and seafaring men are too facile to be compared with! This looks like enjoyment: better speck ...

— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... United States. As the Hawaiian diplomatic correspondence about this was conducted with more asperity than tact, if peace were the purpose, it was a good sore place for the Japanese statesmen to rub, and they resent in the newspapers the facile and cheap pacification resulting from the influence of the United States. In addition the Japanese inhabitants, though they have a larger meal than they can speedily digest in Formosa, are not touched with unqualified pleasurable feeling because we have the Philippines ...

— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

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