Fa-cĭl'i-ty, n.
n. [Lat. facilitas, from facilis; Fr. facilité, Pr. facilitat, Sp. facilidad, It. facilità. See FACILE.]
Sense 1. The quality of being easily performed; freedom from difficulty; ease; as, the facility of a work or operation.
Though facility and hope of success might invite some other choice. Bacon.
Sense 2. Ease in performance; readiness proceeding from skill or use; dexterity; as, practice gives a wonderful facility in executing works of art.
Sense 3. Easiness to be persuaded; readiness of compliance;—usually in a bad sense; pliancy; ductility.
It is a great error to take facility for good nature: tenderness, without discretion, is no better than a more pardonable folly. L’Estrange.
Sense 4. Easiness of access; complaisance; condescension; affability.
Offers himself to the visits of a friend with facility. South.
Sense 5. That which promotes the ease of any action or course of conduct; advantage; valuable aid; assistance;—usually in the plural.
Synonyms—Ease; expertness; readiness; dexterity; complaisance; condescension; affability.—FACILITY, EXPERTNESS, READINESS. These words, as here compared, 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 dexterity. Expertness is facility acquired by long-continued practice. Readiness marks the promptitude with which any thing 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.”