Epilation is simply a word that means the mass temporary removal of hairs. In a single action this act of 'mass plucking' can save you hours of time by having all of the hair removed at once.
Normally hair would be removed one by one using a pair of tweezers. An epilator takes the labor right out of everything by removing the hairs en masse.

An epilator is actually a small machine that has rotating coils that serve to grab and pinch the hairs and pull them out as they are passed over the skin. Some types of epilators also use rotating tweezers to remove the hairs by the root.

There is another very manual way of epilating skin and that is to roll a piece of thread over the surface of the skin. This type of depilation is thousands of years old and is thought to have originated in ancient Egypt. They used a coil of string to trap and pull out excess hair.
Today this technique is called threading and it is a technique that you sometimes see offered in beauty salons. This type of epilation is often used to shape brows.

There are a lot of advantages to removing hair in this manner.
First of all the hair regrowth tends to be really slow. Your skin stays smooth and hair free for a couple of weeks. Yet another benefit is that the hair gets softer and easier to remove the more times you use epilation methods to remove them by the root.

The other great thing about using an electric epilator is that it is so cheap. You only have to buy an epilator once and then it pays for itself with subsequent uses. Other methods of hair removal involve investing in razors, wax, replacement blades, shaving cream and all kinds of accessories that can really add up over time.

Although epilation can sting a bit as all of the hair is pulled out it is not as painful as trying to remove this hair with wax all by yourself. Some people can hardly work up the nerve to remove the hair as it involves ripping a piece of wax or a wax strip deliberately off of our own skin. This takes a lot of determination for some people.

The other thing about waxing is that the hairs have to be specifically positioned in the opposite direction of the wax strip or you could neglect to pull them all out.

Waxing is easiest on you if it is done by someone else. Epilation is easy even if you are doing it solo as the machine whisks over the hairs giving you no sense of anticipation about when exactly you will experience the pain of having the hairs pulled out. It happens so fast that most people barely feel a thing.

The other nice thing is that there is less stinging and reddening after an epilation treatment because the process is so fast. Epilation also rarely causes an allergic reaction because unlike other techniques of hair removal no creams or waxes actually come into contact with the skin.