Home › Business › Event Management & Trade Shows › facilitate

facilitate

fuh-SIL-ih-teyt /fəˈsɪlɪteɪt/

verbB2GREIELTSTOEFLSAT

professionalacademic

To make an action, process, or discussion easier or run more smoothly.

Implies removing obstacles and guiding a process without dictating the final outcome or doing the work oneself.

The story behind the word. From French 'faciliter', from Latin 'facilis' (easy), which itself comes from 'facere' (to do or make). It literally means 'to make doable'.

Word relationships

ease: To ease is to reduce tension or difficulty, while facilitate implies a structured effort to guide a process to success.
assist: To assist is to help a person directly, whereas facilitate is focused on making a process or system run better.

hinder: To make it difficult for someone to do something or for something to happen.
obstruct: To block or get in the way of a process.

Commonly confused with

felicitate: Felicitate means to congratulate someone, while facilitate means to make a process easier.

Word family

facilitator (noun): A person who helps a group understand their common objectives and assists them in planning.
facilitation (noun): The act of making something easier.

Collocations

facilitate discussion
facilitate growth
facilitate communication
designed to facilitate

Example sentences

"The new online portal will facilitate the registration process for all members." Improving the registration process for members.

Memory hook

To facilitate is to make things 'facile' (which means easy in French and Spanish). Making it easy.

When not to use

Do not use when you are directly performing the physical task yourself (e.g., 'I facilitated the washing of the dishes' is overly pompous for just doing them).

Fun facts

In neurology, 'facilitation' refers to the increased postsynaptic response that occurs when a neuron is repeatedly stimulated, showing how the brain 'makes pathways easier' over time.