different between benefaction vs faculty

English

Etymology

From Latin benefacti?nem, from benefacere (“to benefit”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /b?n??fak?(?)n/

Noun

benefaction (countable and uncountable, plural benefactions)

1. An act of doing good; a benefit, a blessing.
   • 1999, Joyce Crick, translating Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Oxford 2008, p. 70:

     We all feel that sleep is a benefaction [transl. Wohlthat] to our psychical life, and the obscure awareness of the popular mind is clearly unwilling to be robbed of its prejudice that the dream is one of the ways in which sleep confers its benefactions.

2. An act of charity; almsgiving.

Translations

English

Etymology

From Middle English faculte (“power, property”), from Old French faculte, from Latin facultas (“capability, ability, skill, abundance, plenty, stock, goods, property; in Medieval Latin also a body of teachers”), another form of facilitas (“easiness, facility, etc.”), from facul, another form of facilis (“easy, facile”); see facile.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?fæ.k?l.ti/

Noun

faculty (plural faculties)

1. (chiefly US) The academic staff at schools, colleges, universities or not-for-profit research institutes, as opposed to the students or support staff.
2. A division of a university.

3. Often in the plural: an ability, power, or skill.
4. An authority, power, or privilege conferred by a higher authority.
5. (Church of England) A licence to make alterations to a church.
6. The members of a profession.

Usage notes

In the sense of academic staff at a university, academic staff, teaching staff or simply staff are preferred in British English.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:faculty

Related terms

• facultative

Translations

Further reading

• faculty in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• faculty in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.