Definition of: faculty

(fak′əl·tē) noun plural ·ties
1. Any mode of bodily or mental behavior regarded as implying a natural endowment or acquired power: the faculty of seeing, feeling, reasoning.
2. Any special form of skill, or unusual ability, whether natural or acquired; knack; turn; native facility.
3. One of the native complex capacities or powers into which the older psychology analyzed, and to which it ascribed, the phenomena of conscious mental life: the faculty of perception, memory, thought, etc.
4. The members of any one of the learned professions, collectively: the faculty of law or medicine.
5. The body of instructors in a university, college, or higher educational institution.
6. A department of learning or instruction at a university: the English faculty.
7. In the Roman Catholic Church, the right to perform certain ecclesiastical functions, bestowed by a prelate upon a subordinate; formerly, also, power or privilege in general bestowed or otherwise obtained: chiefly in the plural.
8. Ability to do or manage: executive skill and efficiency, especially in domestic matters: a housekeeper of notable faculty.
9. Pecuniary resources; means. See synonyms under ABILITY. [<OF faculté <L facultas, -tatis <facilis. See FACILE.]