facilitate
verb
Mead GruverRyan StantonKayla Lasure
Did you know?
English isn’t always easy, but the origin of facilitate is nothing but: the word traces back to the Latin adjective facilis, meaning "easy." Other descendants of facilis in English include facile ("easy to do"), facility ("the quality of being easily performed"), faculty ("ability"), and difficult (from dis- plus facilis, which equals "not easy"). English isn’t the only Latin-influenced language that has facilis to thank for "easy" words: the word for "easy" is fácil in both Spanish and Portuguese, and facile in both Italian and French. The way that facilitating something makes it "easy" (or "easier," as it were) can be likened to paving a road to make traveling to one’s destination smoother. Similarly, when we say, for example, that applying a healthy layer of mulch around the base of a newly planted tree facilitates robust growth, we mean that it (figuratively) paves the way for, or brings about, the sapling’s success.
Examples of facilitate in a Sentence
Darlene Clark Hine, Lure and Loathing, 1993
What physical events might have facilitated the evolution of macroscopic animals?
—Andrew H. Knoll, Scientific American, October 1991
Nothing so facilitates writing as actually having something to say, yet the conditions under which, and the tools with which, writing is done can contribute to facility—or to difficulty.
—Joseph Epstein, The Middle of My Tether, 1983
Cutting taxes may facilitate economic recovery.
Her rise to power was facilitated by her influential friends.
The moderator's role is to facilitate the discussion by asking appropriate questions.
Julie Goldenberg, Forbes.com, 11 Sep. 2025
For Klarna, which turns 20 this year, the offering is a milestone and the next step in the payment revolution that so far has helped the company ramp up to 111 million active customers shopping 790,000 merchants and facilitating $112 billion in retail sales annually.
—Evan Clark, Footwear News, 10 Sep. 2025
All of this is controlled by a NVIDIA Jetson single-board computer, which hosts a message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) broker to facilitate communication between the hardware and the software that emulates a real reactor.
—David Szondy
september 10, New Atlas, 10 Sep. 2025
Oman has facilitated talks between Iran and the US and more successfully between the US and the Houthis.
—Paula Hancocks, CNN Money, 10 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for facilitate
Cite this Entry
“Facilitate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/facilitate. Accessed 18 Sep. 2025.
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facilitate
verb
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facilitate
transitive verb
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facilitate
transitive verb
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