Facilitating

How to spell facilitating

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce facilitating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does facilitating mean?

1. verbMaking an action, process, or outcome easier or helping it to run more smoothly.

Facilitating in a sentence

• The new software is facilitating faster communication between departments.

• She spent the afternoon facilitating a workshop for new staff.

Where does facilitating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin adjective facilis, which meant 'easy' or 'easy to do', itself built on the verb facere, meaning 'to do' or 'to make'. From facilis came the idea of making something easier, and Romance languages turned this into a verb: Italian had facilitare and French faciliter, both meaning 'to make easy'. English borrowed the verb 'facilitate' around the early seventeenth century, keeping the core sense of smoothing the way for an action or process. The same facere root quietly powers a huge family of English words, including 'factory', 'manufacture', 'difficult' (literally 'not easy'), and 'facile'. Knowing that the stem is facil-, with a single c and a single l, is the surest guard against the doubled-letter guesses that trip up the spelling.

How the word is built

• facil- (from Latin facilis: easy)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle)