Fac·ul·ty n.; pl. Faculties
 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, etc.
 6. 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.
 Dean of faculty. See under Dean.
 Faculty of advocates. Scot. See under Advocate.
 Syn: -- Talent; gift; endowment; dexterity; expertness; cleverness; readiness; ability; knack.

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