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.
Special mental endowment; characteristic knack.
Power; prerogative or attribute of office.
Privilege or permission, granted by favor or indulgence, to do a particular thing; authority; license; dispensation.
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.
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.
A collection, body, or society of persons engaged in common pursuits, or having common duties and interests, and sometimes, by charter, peculiar rights and privileges; as, a college of heralds; a college of electors; a college of bishops.
A society of scholars or friends of learning, incorporated for study or instruction, esp. in the higher branches of knowledge; as, the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and many American colleges.
A building, or number of buildings, used by a college.
Fig.: A community.
