faculty

American  

[fak-uhl-tee] / ˈfæk əl ti /

noun

• faculties
  plural

1. an ability, natural or acquired, for a particular kind of action.

   a faculty for making friends easily.

   Synonyms:

   skill, potential, knack, aptitude, capacity

2. one of the powers of the mind, as memory, reason, or speech.

   Though very sick, he is in full possession of all his faculties.

3. an inherent capability of the body.

   the faculties of sight and hearing.

4. exceptional ability or aptitude.

   a president with a faculty for management.

5. Education.

   1. the entire teaching and administrative force of a university, college, or school.

   2. one of the departments of learning, as theology, medicine, or law, in a university.

   3. the teaching body, sometimes with the students, in any of these departments.

6. the members of a learned profession.

   the medical faculty.

7. a power or privilege conferred by the state, a superior, etc..

   The police were given the faculty to search the building.

8. Ecclesiastical. a dispensation, license, or authorization.

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faculty British  

/ ˈfækəltɪ /

noun

1. one of the inherent powers of the mind or body, such as reason, memory, sight, or hearing

2. any ability or power, whether acquired or inherent

3. a conferred power or right

4. 1. a department within a university or college devoted to a particular branch of knowledge

   2. the staff of such a department

   3. all the teaching staff at a university, college, school, etc

5. all members of a learned profession

6. archaic occupation

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Synonym Usage

See ability.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• interfaculty
  noun
• underfaculty
  noun
• profaculty
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• faculties
  plural

Etymology

Origin of faculty

1350–1400; Middle English faculte < Anglo-French, Middle French < Latin facultāt- (stem of facultās ) ability, power, equivalent to facil ( is ) easy ( see facile) + -tāt- -ty ²; cf. facility

Explanation

A faculty refers to any of your mental or physical abilities. If you lose your faculties, you are powerless. The faculty of a school is comprised of the people who work there. Lose them, and you have a different kind of problem. Faculty comes from the Old French word faculté, which means “skill, accomplishment, or learning.” You may have great faculties of memory, sight, mobility, charm, math, and musicality, but, as Beethoven was in the end, be robbed of your faculty of hearing. Any aptitude or ability — inborn or learned — that you have is a faculty. Also, if you go to school, your teachers make up the faculty of that school.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

faculty faculties

"Every biological phenomenon occurs in the physical world -- in space and time -- and involves changes in shape, quantity and matter," said Yarahmadian, a faculty member in MSU's Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2026

If admissions policies, faculty and curriculum don’t improve, administrators haven’t changed anything.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

A growing number of universities, from Yale to Cornell, have either banned or discouraged faculty reliance on AI detection tools as the primary evidence of alleged cheating.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

“Loneliness is so connected to mental and physical health that it’s consequential,” said Richard Weissbourd, senior lecturer and faculty director for the Making Caring Common Project, a program of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026

Surely she would not have to go in there with the students, she thought; surely he would open the faculty lounge soon and she could use the unisex restroom there, the one reserved for teachers.

From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng

“Joan is famously not a fan of leaving the Upper West Side,” the author observes—which could apply to about three-quarters of New York’s music faculties.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

In the closing days of the war, close allies questioned his mental faculties.

From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026

No adult treats any other adult that way unless they’ve lost their mental faculties or never had them.

From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2025

Students at Sapienza University where she works are staging sit-ins at several faculties.

From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2025

She tried to figure out what could possibly have caused such agony, but her faculties didn’t stretch to memory just yet.

From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer

Related Words

• department
• institute
• personnel
• staff
• university