Meaning & use
facility
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Meanings
nouncountable
A building, room or large piece of equipment set up for a particular activity.
Grammar: Singular for a single place: a training facility.
Patterns
- a facility for something
- a facility in somewhere
The company built a new research facility near the river.
There is a recycling facility at the edge of town.
The hospital is a modern medical facility with a children's ward.
nounusually plural
Services, rooms or equipment that a place provides for people to use, such as toilets or a gym.
Grammar: Usually facilities, with a plural verb: the facilities are clean.
Patterns
- facilities for someone/something
- the facilities at somewhere
The campsite has excellent washing facilities.
The hotel offers conference facilities for up to two hundred people.
Sports facilities in the area are free for students.
nounsingularformal
An ability to do something easily and without effort.
Grammar: Often used with an and for: a facility for languages.
Patterns
- a facility for something
- a facility with something
She has a remarkable facility for learning languages.
He plays the piano with great facility.
The student showed a facility with numbers from an early age.
nouncountablebusiness
A feature or arrangement that lets you use a service in a certain way, such as a credit line or a computer function.
Grammar: Common in banking and technology: an overdraft facility.
Patterns
- a facility to do something
The bank offered her an overdraft facility of five hundred pounds.
The phone has a facility to lock the screen remotely.
The company arranged a loan facility to cover the costs.
Word forms
| plural | facilities |
|---|
Common combinations
- sports facility
- The school's new sports facility includes a pool.
- storage facility
- They keep their old furniture in a storage facility.
- medical facilities
- Medical facilities in the village are limited.
- leisure facilities
- The resort has excellent leisure facilities.
- with great facility
- He solved the problem with great facility.
- overdraft facility
- Her overdraft facility saved her until payday.
Synonyms and how they differ
- amenity
- An amenity is a pleasant extra feature of a place, while a facility can be a basic provision or a whole building.
- installation
- Installation is a set-up of equipment or a base, often industrial or military, and is narrower than facility.
- ease
- Ease works for the ability sense, but it is a more common, everyday word than facility.
- aptitude
- Aptitude is a natural talent for learning something, while facility focuses on doing it without effort.
Opposites
Word family
- facilitate verb
- to make something easier
- facilitator noun
- someone who guides a group
- facile adjective
- too easily done, shallow
- facilitation noun
- the act of making something easier
Commonly confused: facility or faculty?
facility vs faculty
Faculty means a mental ability or a group of university teachers, while facility means a place, equipment or ease in doing something.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'facility' to mean natural ease or skill?
Choose one answer.
With great facility means very easily and skillfully. In the other sentences facility means a place or equipment.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “facility”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.