語源はfact, to doで、語源的にはfact, effectと同じ。後に学部全体を指すようになる。
英語の語源
faculty
faculty: [14] If one has a faculty for doing something, one finds it ‘easy’ to do. The word comes, via Old French faculte, from Latin facultās. This was a parallel form to facilitās (source of English facility [15]). Both were derived from Latin facilis ‘easy’ (whence English facile [15]), an adjective formed from the verb facere ‘do’. Since facilitās more closely resembled facilis, it retained its connotations of ‘easiness’, whereas by the classical period facultās had more or less lost them, coming to mean ‘capability, power’. => facile, facility
faculty (n.)
late 14c., "ability, opportunity, means, resources," from Old French faculte "skill, accomplishment, learning" (14c., Modern French faculté) and directly from Latin facultatem (nominative facultas) "power, ability, capability, opportunity; sufficient number, abundance, wealth," from *facli-tat-s, from facilis (see facile).
Academic sense "branch of knowledge" (late 14c.) was in Old French and probably was the earliest in English (it is attested in Anglo-Latin from late 12c.), on notion of "ability in knowledge" or "body of persons on whom are conferred specific professional powers." Originally each department was a faculty; the use in reference to the whole teaching staff of an entire college dates from 1767. Related: Facultative. The Latin words facultas and facilitas "were originally different forms of the same word; the latter, owing to its more obvious relationship to the adj., retained the primary sense of 'easiness', which the former had ceased to have before the classical period." [OED]
例文
1. Faculty members complain that thair students are unprepared to do college-level work.
学院の先生たちは、学生はまだ大学の授業に慣れていないと愚痴をこぼしている。
2.She was Dean of the Science faculty at Sophia University.
彼女は上智大学科学部の院長です。
3. Faculty members devote most of their time to scholarly research.
全院の教師はほとんどの時間を学術研究に費やしている。
4.How can faculty improve their teaching so as to encourage creativity？
教師たちはどのようにして創造性を引き出すために教育を改善することができるのだろうか。
5.The Bush Foundation has funded a variety of faculty development programs.