facultative

comparative more facultative · superlative most facultative

1. Of or relating to faculty, especially to mental faculty.
2. Not obligate; optional, discretionary or elective.

   But does the penny fare end here, said Mr. Nixon, at a merely facultative stop? Surely it ends rather at the station.

   1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC

   1 more example

   The policy would be a “facultative” policy, whereby the insurers would first have assessed the risk involved in the particular shipment and decided to accept it.

   2020, Jonathan Mance et al., editors, Insurance Disputes, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 584

   Synonyms: discretionary, elective, free, noncompulsory, nonmandatory, nonobligate, nonobligatory, nonrequired · Antonyms: basic, essential, indispensable, necessar, necessary, necessitous, needed, prerequisite

3. That grants permission or power to do something.
4. biologyAble to perform a particular life function, or to live generally, in more than one way.

   facultative feeder

   1 more example

   This hypothesis might be supported by the evidence that there are varieties of pathogenic fungi of which parasitism is in varying degrees, between obligate parasitic and facultative parasitic. The facultative parasite, which usually lives as a saprophyte but under some conditions can parasitize on a plant, seems to be a pathogen with the lowest parasitic adaptation.

   1993, Hachiro Oku, Plant Pathogenesis and Disease Control, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 10

   Antonyms: obligate

5. geometryAt which a given function is positive.

   For then it is seen, as before, that it is the points outside the two sheets which are facultative, and not the points between the surface and the touching plane.

   1866, George Salmon, Lessons Introductory to the Modern Higher Algebra, Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co., page 197