ż Pertinacious shares the basic meaning of holding resolutely to
a course of action, purpose, or opinion, but it carries a negative
connotation of being so tenacious as to become stubborn or
obstinate. For example: “The pertinacious questioning of the
high-strung student annoyed his professor and the rest of his
classmates so much that the professor gave up on holding open
discussions in class.”Facile (adjective)
'RQH RU DFKLHYHG ZLWK OLWWOH HIIRUW RU GLI¿FXOW\ HDV\ SHUIRUPHG ZLWK
HIIRUWOHVVHDVHDQGÀXHQF\z Facile can be used to describe work, actions, speech, or movements,
as in the following context sentence: “The professor’s facile wit
kept his students on their toes and engaged throughout the class.”
The word is often used to describe people who are highly skilled
DQGDWHDVHLQDSDUWLFXODU¿HOGRIHQGHDYRUz Facile is derived from the Latin root fac (“make or do”), which we
explored in an earlier lecture. People who are facile can “do” things
easily and effortlessly. Fac is also commonly spelled in three other
ways: fec (effective), ¿F (DUWL¿FLDO), and -fyDYHUEIRUPLQJVXI¿[
form of this root, meaning “to make into.” We see this -fyVXI¿[
in such words as sanctify (“to make sacred or holy”), magnify (“to
make larger”), dulcify (“to make sweeter”), and stupefy (“to stun”;
literally, “to make into a stupor”).z Two other words that are closely related to facile are facility and
facilitate. A person who has the facility for a task or job possesses
the aptitude or skill to do it easily and effortlessly. Facilitate, of
course, means to make doing something easier. To remember
these related words, you might connect them in your vocabulary
notebook with the following sentence: “A facile person has the
facility to facilitate work.”