v. [f. F. facilit-er to render easy (= It. facilitare, f. facilis FACILE, after L. vbs. like dēbilitāre, etc.) + -ATE3.]
1. trans. To render easier the performance of (an action), the attainment of (a result); to afford facilities for, promote, help forward (an action or process).
1611. Cotgr., Faciliter, to facilitate or make easie.
1621. Sir G. Calvert, in The Fortescue Papers, 155. So long as the Prince Palatine shall keepe himself disengaged from medling in them, I hope it will be to the advantage of his service and facilitate the present negotiation.
1670. Cotton, Espernon, I. II. 64. It infinitely much facilitated the Duke of Guise his Victories, to have an Enemy reduc’d to such streights before he came to engage them.
1714. Lady M. W. Montagu, Letter, lxxxvi. 141. I think it looks well, and may facilitate your election.
1732. Arbuthnot, Rules of Diet, 278. Cordial. All such things as increase and facilitate the animal or natural Motions, the Power of, moving the Muscles, or circulating the Fluids.
1838. T. Thomson, Chem. Org. Bodies, 102. All the alkaline bodies, on the other hand, facilitate the solution of picrotoxin in water.
1883. Stubbs’ Mercantile Circular, 27 Sept., 861/2. The reformed procedure … has not appreciably facilitated the progress of public business.
† b. To make easier or less abstruse; to simplify. Obs. rare.
a. 1656. Hales, Tracts (1677), 89. I thank you for pains you have taken facilitating to my understanding the scope and purpose of the XI of St. Mat.
¶ 2. To lessen the labor of, assist (a person).
1646. H. Lawrence, Of Our Communion and Warre with Angels, 77. Which may more easily leade and facilitate us, to the consenting to such a lust or inordinary.
1650. Fuller, A Pisgah-sight of Palestine, II. 64. Here lived the Emims, shrowdly smitten by Chedorlaomer, which probably did facilitate the Moabites in their victory over them.
1890. The Saturday Review, LXX. 6 Sept., 303/2. As the author seems to aim solely at facilitating the pupil in his dealings with everyday French, as he protests against classics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and as he is almost tearful about the habit of studying poetry, he will please some folk nowadays.
Hence Facilitated ppl. a., Facilitating vbl. sb., and Facilitating ppl. a.
1613. Sherley, Travels in Persia, 3. Which would haue bene both a great diuersion from his other designes, and a facillitating of any enterprise, which that generous spirit of that Earle was euer framing, and vndertaking against him.
1674. Boyle, Excell. Theol., II. iv. 171. Rectifying … errours … by the assistance of such facilitating helps.
1776. Bentham, Wks. (1843), I. 288. These facilitating circumstances.
1876. Mozley, Univ. Serm., vii. 151. Undoubtedly habit is a great facilitating principle.
1884. Pall Mall G., 2 April, 1/2. The lake district … is in no need of facilitated means of access.
