Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)
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First published 1956 (SND Vol. IV).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
FACILE, adj. Sc. Law: easily led or influenced by others, gullible. Hence facility, n. (Sc. 1752 J. Spottiswoode Stile of Writs 160).Sc. 1773 J. Boswell Tour to Hebr. (1909) 332:
A weak man, liable to imposition, or, as we term it in Scotland, a facile man.Sc. 1773 Erskine Institute iv. i. § 27:
Where lesion in the deed and facility in the granter concur, the most slender circumstances of fraud or circumvention are sufficient to set it aside.Sc. 1825 Jam.:
A facile man is a forensic phrase in Sc., which has no synonyme in Eng. It does not signify one who is weak in judgment, or deficient in mental ability, but who possesses that softness of disposition that he is liable to be easily wrought upon by others.Sc. 1839 G. Bell Princ. Law Scot. 785:
The party himself, expressing in a bond or other writing his consciousness of facility, and binding himself to certain persons, that he shall not, without their consent, grant any deed.Sc. 1939 Faculty Digest Suppl. (1930–40) 314:
His mental grasp was feeble, he was weak and facile, and he did not understand the purposes and effect of what he was doing and the deeds had been obtained by misrepresentation and pressure.Sc. 1946 A. D. Gibb Legal Terms 34:
When one person by a dishonest course of conduct plays upon a facile person in order to secure an advantage there is facility and circumvention.
