faculty

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An inherent power or ability.
2. n. Any of the powers or capacities possessed by the human mind. See Synonyms at ability.
3. n. The ability to perform or act.
4. n. Any of the divisions or comprehensive branches of learning at a college or university: the faculty of law.
5. n. The teachers and instructors within such a division.
6. n. A body of teachers.
7. n. All of the members of a learned profession: the medical faculty.
8. n. Authorization granted by authority; conferred power.
9. n. Archaic An occupation; a trade.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A specific power, mental or physical; a special capacity for any particular kind of action or affection; natural capability: sometimes, but rarely, restricted to an active power: as, the faculty of perception or of speech; a faculty for mimicry: sometimes extended to inanimate things: as, the faculty of a wedge; the faculty of simples. See theory of faculties, below.
2. n. A power or privilege conferred; bestowed capacity for the performance of any act or function; ability or authority acquired in any way. In Roman Catholic ecclesiastical law a faculty is specifically an authorization by a superior conferring certain ecclesiastical rights upon a subordinate. The most important faculties are those conferred by the pope upon bishops.
3. n. A body of persons on whom are conferred specific professional powers; all the authorized members of a learned profession collectively, or a body associated or acting together in a particular place or institution; when used absolutely (the faculty), the medical profession: as, the learned faculty of the law; the faculty of a college; the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh.
4. n. Executive ability; skill in devising and executing or supervising: applied usually to domestic affairs.
5. n. In colonial New England, a trade or profession.
6. n. In the law of divorce (commonly in the plural), the pecuniary ability of the husband, in view of both his property and his capacity to earn money, with reference to which the amount of the wife's alimony is fixed.
7. n. See the adjectives.
8. n. In algebra, the product of a series of factors in arithmetical progression, a(a + b) … (a + (m — 1)b).

Wiktionary

1. n. The scholarly staff at colleges or universities, as opposed to the students or support staff.
2. n. A division of a university (e.g. a Faculty of Science or Faculty of Medicine).
3. n. An ability, skill, or power.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. 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.
2. n. Special mental endowment; characteristic knack.
3. n. rare Power; prerogative or attribute of office.
4. n. Privilege or permission, granted by favor or indulgence, to do a particular thing; authority; license; dispensation.
5. n. 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
6. n. (Amer. Colleges) 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.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. one of the inherent cognitive or perceptual powers of the mind
2. n. the body of teachers and administrators at a school