T. S. Eliot
Did you know?
If you’ve been fretting over how to use the word facile properly, we’re here to put your mind at ease. The word’s origins provide a major clue and are quite easy to trace: facile glided into English (via Anglo-French) from the Latin adjective facilis, meaning “easy, accommodating, nimble,” ultimately from facere, “to make, bring about, perform, do.” And indeed, facile can be used as a synonym for easy in some situations, though it is more formal and usually carries with it something extra—namely, excess. Something described as facile, such as an argument, is too easily made or done, as in “offered only facile answers to complex questions,” implying undue haste or shallowness. And facile tears are too easily produced by the person shedding them, suggesting they are lacking in sincerity. But although facile often bears a whiff of tut-tutting judgment, such is not always the case: it can be used positively to describe someone who is poised and assured, with an easy grace, as in “a facile lecturer.” Similarly, a writer whose words flow easily and fluidly on the page may be said to pen “facile prose.”
Examples of facile in a Sentence
Francine Prose, The Lives of the Muses, 2002
Melville shrank from atheism, and from all facile theisms.
—John Updike, Hugging the Shore, (1983) 1984
… I saw that my old enemy was dead, Amy [Lowell], noble Amy. How I despised myself then for my facile self-pity and for my failure to die—how she seemed to have worsted me once again.
—Conrad Aiken 14 May 1925,
in Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken, 1978
This problem needs more than just a facile solution.
He is a wonderfully facile writer.
Richard Brody, New Yorker, 15 Oct. 2025
Both prove facile stabs at deepening their male counterparts.
—J. Kim Murphy, Variety, 14 Mar. 2025
The inability to perceive this limitation is amplified for LLMs as their facile use of human language suggests to humans that all other brain capabilities () exist in addition to the Communicating function, as this is the foundational cognitive basis set for all humans.
—Marcus Weldon, Newsweek, 24 Feb. 2025
In a sea of facile banalities, his lyrics take us back to the golden era of Spanish language singer/songwriters, but set to contemporary arrangements that place them squarely in 2025.
—Ingrid Fajardo, Billboard, 14 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for facile
Cite this Entry
“Facile.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/facile. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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facile
adjective
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