Word.ws English Dictionary

fac

/fæk/

fac noun: a factotum letter, or a similar kind of ornamentally bordered letter formerly used at the start of a chapter or section of a book.

Noun (1)

fac (plural facs)

  1. (rare) A factotum letter, or a similar kind of ornamentally bordered letter formerly used at the start of a chapter or section of a book.
    • If a Fac or Flowered letter be deeper than the Composing-stick we measure the exact width of it by Quotations, or common Quadrats; which we put into our Stick, and the Fac into the Galley, and then compose, and empty each time so many lines as our measure in the Stick will allow, till we have...1771, Philip Luckombe, The History and Art of Printing, page 385
    • This combination of art and accident may be continued to any given length, as punches for letter-press may be formed of steel broken as above, by cutting, drilling, punching, bending (and all their varieties upon the same principle) parts of the letters and leaving the grain of the steel, &c. to...1859, Robert Barclay, “A.D. 1790, July 26 -- No. 1766”, in Great Britain. Patent Office, editor, Patents for Invention, page 101

Noun (2)

fac (plural facs)

  1. (colloquial) A faculty within a university.
    • Here's to Hibben. We call him Jack
      The whitest man in all the fac.
      Of Princeton spirit he does not lack1973, Princeton Alumni Weekly, volume 74, page vii
    • I had my essay on a memory stick so it just needed to be printed out in the Arts Fac; I'd intended to re-read it for sense but meeting Liv seemed more important.2012, Jonathan Dennis, The good die and the bad live on, page 209

Noun (3) capitalized: FAC

FAC (plural FACs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Forward Air Control.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of forward air controller.
  3. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of flow-accelerated corrosion.
  4. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of flow-assisted corrosion.
  5. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Fellow of the Atlantic Council.
  6. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Fatal accident control.
  7. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of fast attack craft

Forms of fac

pluralfacs
pluralFACs

Origin of fac

Clipping of factotum.

Clipping of faculty.

Words formed from fac

Phrases with fac

Words that rhyme with fac

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about fac

What does fac mean?
Fac means a factotum letter, or a similar kind of ornamentally bordered letter formerly used at the start of a chapter or section of a book.
What part of speech is fac?
Fac is a noun.
How do you pronounce fac?
Fac is pronounced /fæk/.
What is the plural of fac?
The plural of fac is facs.

Words near fac in the dictionary

  1. fabulously
  2. fabulousness
  3. fabulousnesses
  4. faburden
  5. faburdens
  6. fac
  7. fac brat
  8. fac brats
  9. fac-simile
  10. fac-similes
  11. facacta

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fac (page history and authors); FAC (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fac.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fac. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.