faculty
noun
Simple meaning
The academic staff at schools, colleges, universities or not-for-profit research institutes.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
fakuhlteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfækəlti
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
chiefly canadausphilippines
The academic staff at schools, colleges, universities or not-for-profit research institutes, as opposed to the students or support staff.
A division of a university.
An authority, power, or privilege conferred by a higher authority.
The members of a profession.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The academic staff at schools, colleges, universities or not-for-profit research institutes, as opposed to the students or support staff.
Used this way, faculty is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in academic writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Academic writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use faculty
- “The university faculty meeting is scheduled for Monday morning.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An educator who works at a college or university.
One of the inherent cognitive or perceptual powers of the mind.
The faculty through which the external world is apprehended.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- universitynoun
- professornoun
- undergraduatenoun
- deannoun
- conservatorynoun
- postgraduatenoun
- graduateverb
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.