How to Use facile in a Sentence

facile

adjective
  • This problem needs more than just a facile solution.
  • He is a wonderfully facile writer.
  • His songs can sound facile to my ear.
    — David L. Ulin, The Atlantic, 11 May 2026
  • The idea that things were working before this crisis is facile.
    — Vicky Spratt, refinery29.com, 15 May 2020
  • That demands an actor be facile at playing both large and small moments.
    — Randy Myers, Mercury News, 9 Mar. 2026
  • But to dismiss this as Trump-ish white rage, a tool of the right wing, is too facile, you are warned.
    — Lynn Yaeger, Vogue, 17 Dec. 2018
  • The facile argument here is that this justifies the high prices of new medicines.
    — Matthew Herper, STAT, 2 Mar. 2020
  • The facile answer is to say that the public just isn’t performing enough tests.
    — Benjamin Mazer, The Atlantic, 7 Dec. 2021
  • Molière is not our contemporary in some facile and fatuous way.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 1 Feb. 2022
  • What hangs in the air, rather, is the willingness of too many to make those facile comparisons.
    — Zachary Karabell, Twin Cities, 26 Sep. 2019
  • That movie, too, scrambles any facile race-versus-class dichotomy.
    — A.o. Scott and Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 5 Jan. 2017
  • This one seems simple, but politics tends to muddy even the most facile of notions.
    — Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN, 22 Apr. 2020
  • If the movie’s points can be well taken, its rhetorical strategies are often facile.
    — Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times, 28 Apr. 2020
  • Still, The Secret Agent avoids facile nihilism.
    — Michael Snyder, The Atlantic, 13 Mar. 2026
  • The play’s clearly still the thing, but its invocations here seem facile in the face of a father’s grief.
    — Justin Chang, New Yorker, 21 Nov. 2025
  • These architects don’t traffic in facile solutions and flashy shapes.
    — Blair Kamin, chicagotribune.com, 27 Oct. 2019
  • The movie’s brief early scenes, leading up to the kidnapping, tag the three teens with facile identities.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2017
  • The above examples are facile but hopefully clearly convey a point.
    — Jeff Gorke, Forbes, 6 Sep. 2021
  • That approach will get us a lot further than facile comparisons to our closest relatives.
    — Agustín Fuentes, Discover Magazine, 10 July 2018
  • Industry segment, age, and race are all factors that complicate the numbers so many are ready to quote in a facile way.
    — Erik Sherman, Forbes, 29 Aug. 2021
  • But Ligon is too subtle and grown-up to be making facile propaganda statements.
    — Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 28 July 2022
  • The book, like Williams’s first, is a confused and confusing text, full of clichéd turns of phrase that match its facile conclusion.
    — Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 26 Oct. 2019
  • The problem is, the debate usually devolves into a facile back and forth that edifies no one.
    — Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 21 Mar. 2018
  • There’s a facile critical tendency to liken a wide range of talky and small-scale dramas to the films of Éric Rohmer.
    — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 27 Feb. 2026
  • Jacquot isn’t doing anything so facile as criticizing past mores to praise our own, though the sense of progress is unmistakable.
    — Richard Brod, The New Yorker, 14 July 2021
  • But what was no doubt meant to be a smart, humorous and incisive war of wits is instead mostly grating, facile and unfunny.
    — Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle, 28 Feb. 2018
  • Here is where some observers balk, contending that the Celebrant’s return to faith after all this seems too abrupt and facile.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 21 July 2019
  • The facile novelty of adultery is its own mask, a sexy way of dressing up a deep, frightened longing for security.
    — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 6 Mar. 2026
  • This is an overly facile answer, though, and likely not possible for the vast majority of this cohort.
    — WIRED, 27 Sep. 2022
  • Many of the more facile claims made by Brexiteers have been disproved, at some cost to Britain’s reputation abroad.
    — Fraser Nelson, WSJ, 23 Mar. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'facile.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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