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

How the soule, by one simple facultie, performeth so many and diverse actions.

From Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

They know no arte nor facultie, but onely shooting, which they exercise dayly, as well men as women, and kill such beasts as serue them for their foode.

From The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 03 by Hakluyt, Richard

All the Egyptians ware compelled to brynge euery man their names to the chiefe Iustices, and the facultie or science wherby they liued.

From The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 06 Madiera, the Canaries, Ancient Asia, Africa, etc. by Hakluyt, Richard

This reason and nature craveth; and I can not but trow but that the worthie inventoures of this divyne facultie shot at this mark.

From Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles by Wheatley, Henry Benjamin

Here we accuse our seeing facultie Of weaknesse, and our sense of foul deceit, We do accuse and yet we know not why.

From Democritus Platonissans by More, Henry

Related Words

• department
• institute
• personnel
• staff
• university