Fa*cil"i*ty (f&adot;*s&ibreve;l"&ibreve;*t&ybreve;),
n.; pl. Facilities (-
t&ibreve;z). [L. facilitas, fr. facilis easy: cf. F.
facilité. 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. -- 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."
