FACULTY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does faculty mean? 

• FACULTY (noun)
  The noun FACULTY has 2 senses:

1. one of the inherent cognitive or perceptual powers of the mind

2. the body of teachers and administrators at a school

  Familiarity information: FACULTY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FACULTY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

One of the inherent cognitive or perceptual powers of the mind

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

faculty; mental faculty; module

Hypernyms ("faculty" is a kind of...):

ability; power (possession of the qualities (especially mental qualities) required to do something or get something done)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "faculty"):

attention (the faculty or power of mental concentration)

language; speech (the mental faculty or power of vocal communication)

memory; retention; retentiveness; retentivity (the power of retaining and recalling past experience)

intellect; reason; understanding (the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination)

sensation; sense; sensory faculty; sentience; sentiency (the faculty through which the external world is apprehended)

volition; will (the capability of conscious choice and decision and intention)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The body of teachers and administrators at a school

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

faculty; staff

Context example:

the dean addressed the letter to the entire staff of the university

Hypernyms ("faculty" is a kind of...):

body (a group of persons associated by some common tie or occupation and regarded as an entity)

Meronyms (members of "faculty"):

prof; professor (someone who is a member of the faculty at a college or university)

Holonyms ("faculty" is a member of...):

school (an educational institution)

 Context examples 

Mina is now sleeping like a little child; it is a wonderful thing that her faculty of sleep remains to her in the midst of her terrible trouble.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

But the horror of what might possibly happen almost took from me my faculties.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my faculties.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The faculty of taste, distinguishing substances by means of the taste buds.

(Gustation, NCI Thesaurus)

And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practised, among human creatures.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The auditory faculty, the perception of sound by the ear.

(Hearing, NCI Thesaurus)

I don't know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind that I ought to have.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"I meant faculty," the doctor explained.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I seem to have lost the faculty of thought.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And following the latter train of thought, she soon afterwards added: If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)