Meaning & use
faculty
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Meanings
nouncountable
A natural ability of the body or mind, such as sight, hearing or reasoning.
Grammar: Often plural when it means someone's overall mental powers: she still has all her faculties.
Patterns
- the faculty of something
- have all your faculties
Even at ninety, he kept all his mental faculties.
Humans have the faculty of speech, which sets them apart from most animals.
The accident did not affect her faculty of hearing.
nouncountable or uncountableAmerican
The teaching staff of a school, college or university.
Grammar: In American English it takes a singular or plural verb: the faculty is or are meeting; it means teachers, not students.
Patterns
- faculty member
- join the faculty
The faculty voted to change the grading policy.
She has been on the faculty at the university for twenty years.
Students and faculty shared the cafeteria.
nouncountableBritish
A major division of a university devoted to one field of study.
Grammar: Often part of a name: the Faculty of Law.
Patterns
- the faculty of something
He is dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
The Faculty of Arts is moving to a new building.
Applicants must apply directly to the faculty.
Word forms
| plural | faculties |
|---|
Common combinations
- mental faculties
- Reading daily helps him keep his mental faculties sharp.
- critical faculty
- Tiredness dulled her critical faculty.
- faculty member
- Each faculty member advises about ten students.
- faculty meeting
- The faculty meeting ran two hours over.
- dean of the faculty
- The dean of the faculty announced the new program.
Synonyms and how they differ
- ability
- Ability is a general word for being able to do something, while faculty means a built-in power of body or mind.
- staff
- Staff covers all employees of a school, but faculty means only the teaching staff.
- department
- A department is a smaller unit inside a faculty or college in many universities.
Opposites
Word family
- facultative adjective
- able to live or act in more than one way, a technical biology term
Commonly confused: faculty or faculty?
faculty vs faculty
In British English, a faculty is a division of a university, but in American English the word usually means the teachers themselves.
Practice
The professor joined the ___ of the history department last year. Which word fits best?
Choose one answer.
Faculty means teaching staff. Facility means a building or amenity, which looks and sounds similar but does not fit joining a department's staff.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “faculty”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.