faculty

faculty is a Noun

Definition:

[1] Ability to act or perform, whether inborn or cultivated; capacity for any natural function; especially, an original mental power or capacity for any of the well-known classes of mental activity; psychical or soul capacity; capacity for any of the leading kinds of soul activity, as knowledge, feeling, volition; intellectual endowment or gift; power; as, faculties of the mind or the soul. But know that in the soul Are many lesser faculties that serve Reason as chief. Milton. What a piece of work is a man ! how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! Shak.

[2] Special mental endowment; characteristic knack. He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous temperament. Hawthorne.

[3] Power; prerogative or attribute of office. [R.] This Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek. Shak.

[4] Privilege or permission, granted by favor or indulgence, to do a particular thing; authority; license; dispensation. The pope . . . granted him a faculty to set him free from his promise. Fuller. It had not only faculty to inspect all bishops` dioceses, but to change what laws and statutes they should think fit to alter among the colleges. Evelyn.

[5] A body of a men to whom any specific right or privilege is granted; formerly, the graduates in any of the four departments of a university or college (Philosophy, Law, Medicine, or Theology), to whom was granted the right of teaching (profitendi or docendi) in the department in which they had studied; at present, the members of a profession itself; as, the medical faculty; the legal faculty, ect.

[6] The body of person to whom are intrusted the government and instruction of a college or university, or of one of its departments; the president, professors, and tutors in a college. Dean of faculty. See under Dean. -- Faculty of advocates. (Scot.) See under Advocate.