faculty
Pluralfaculties
- 1The academic staff at a school, college, university, or nonprofit research institute, as distinct from the students or support staff.
The faculty voted to revise the undergraduate curriculum.
New faculty are expected to publish research alongside their teaching duties.
Similarstaff, professors, academics
Note
This is chiefly the usage of the United States, Canada and the Philippines, where the faculty are the people who teach and do research, as opposed to students and support staff. Readers used to other varieties of English may hear the university-division meaning instead. So a line like "the faculty voted" can name a body of people in one country and an administrative unit in another.
- 2An inherent mental or physical ability, power, or skill.
A faculty for quick mental calculation made her a natural at chess.
He retained full command of his mental faculties well into his nineties.
Similarability, capacity, power, aptitude, talent
Oppositeinability, incapacity
Note
The oldest sense, closest to the Latin facultas, "capability, ability, skill". In the plural it usually means a person's mental powers taken together: someone keeps their faculties intact, and Swift in 1704 complains that an argument "strains my Faculties to their highest Stretch." Shakespeare's Hamlet uses the singular with no article, "how infinite in faculty," for the human capacity in general.
- 3A division of a university responsible for a broad field of study, grouping related departments.
The university's faculty of engineering houses six departments.
Budget cuts forced two faculties to merge last year.
Similarschool, college, division
Note
Used in a university's own names, the word takes a capital and an "of" phrase: the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Medicine. Students move between faculties the way they move between schools, and in that capitalized form it reads as a proper name rather than a general term.
- 4An authority, power, or privilege granted to someone by a higher authority.
The court conferred upon the trustees the faculty to sell the land.
The agent acted only under faculties granted by the crown.
Similarauthority, power, right, license, privilege
Note
Church law gives this sense its sharpest use, usually in the plural. In John M. Huels's The Catechumenate and the Law (1994), a Latin priest without "bi-ritual faculties" must baptize and confirm according to the Latin liturgical books. Faculties here are permissions held from above. They are not skills of one's own, which is the difference from the "ability" meaning.
- 5The members of a particular profession considered collectively.
The nation's medical faculty issued guidance during the outbreak.
He addressed the assembled faculty of physicians at the conference.
Similarprofession, establishment, fraternity
- 6Official permission, granted by church authority, to make alterations to a church building.
The parish applied for a faculty to install the war memorial.
No faculty had been granted for the earlier alterations.
Similarpermit, license, permission, authorization
Note
In the Church of England, the permission itself is called a faculty. It is countable and concrete: a parish applies for a faculty, and one is granted or refused for a particular alteration to the church. It is a narrow, practical case of authority conferred from above, tied to the fabric of the building.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Middle English 'faculte' (power, property), from Old French 'faculte', from Latin 'facultas' (capability, ability, skill, plenty, property; in Medieval Latin also a body of teachers). This was another form of 'facilitas' (easiness), from 'facilis' (easy). It is a doublet of 'facility'.