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

The announcement came days after UC’s faculty admissions board pulled back on its study plan without offering alternatives or giving a public explanation as to why it rescinded its vote on the original plan.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026

A UC faculty task force recommended keeping the SAT in 2020, but the regents overruled it and voted to develop a UC-specific test that a committee later determined would take too long to create.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026

Some faculty argued the university was moving too slowly.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026

A growing group of faculty, students and alumni—including Yale Law grad Blumenthal—are urging the university’s leaders to resist making a settlement.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026

The drama sponsor, a woman named Joan Mott, a “very nice person” and his colleague on the English faculty, was staging a scene and blocking the actors.

From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove

But it is true that, for progressive education, school begins with the child and her interests and developing faculties, not with the subject matter and its intrinsic nature.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 2026

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

From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2025

Its authors are drawn from the faculties of the state universities of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Florida and Ohio, as well as from Johns Hopkins, Duke and the Cleveland Clinic.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2024

The issue has torn apart the faculties at these universities.

From New York Times ● May 2, 2024

Mr. Muhammad told me that his older children’s lack of formal education reflected their sacrifice to form the backbone for today’s Universities of Islam in Detroit and Chicago which have better-qualified faculties.

From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey

Related Words

• department
• institute
• personnel
• staff
• university