Facilitate

How to spell facilitate

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce facilitate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does facilitate mean?

1. verbTo make an action or process easier or smoother, often by providing help or removing obstacles.

Facilitate in a sentence

• A clear agenda can facilitate a productive meeting.

• The new software is designed to facilitate remote collaboration between offices.

Where does facilitate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin adjective facilis, which literally meant 'easy' or 'do-able', and that adjective was itself built on the verb facere, meaning 'to do' or 'to make'. From facilis the Italians coined facilitare, 'to make easy', and French followed with faciliter; English borrowed the idea in the early 1600s to mean 'to render easier or less difficult'. The sense has stayed remarkably stable: to facilitate something is still to smooth its path rather than to do it yourself. The same facere root powers a whole family of English words, including 'factory', 'manufacture', and 'facile', so the single c and single l in 'facilitate' echo the slim spelling of facilis rather than any doubled letters. Remembering that it shares its core with 'facile' (meaning effortless) is a handy guard against over-spelling it.

How the word is built

• facil- (from Latin facilis: easy)
• -itate (verb-forming suffix meaning 'to make')