asset
Americannoun
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assets
plural
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a useful and desirable thing or quality.
Organizational ability is an asset.
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a single item of ownership having exchange value.
Our summer home is an asset we're not willing to sell.
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Digital Technology. one of the media components that, taken together, comprise all of the elements of a video game, such as the environments, objects, character art and animation, and sound design.
All of the game assets are downloaded to your hard drive during the install, so slow load times are local and indicate a problem with your drive.
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(in intelligence and information gathering) a person followed or spied upon to obtain information, who may be consenting, forced, or unaware of being used.
They threatened to release a catalog of virtually every CIA asset within the Soviet Union.
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Military. a physical resource, such as a piece of equipment, vehicle, or building.
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assets. see assets.
noun
Discover More
Commonly, the term denotes anything of value.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of asset
First recorded in 1525–35; back formation from assets, in phrase have assets, literally, “have enough (to pay obligations),” from Anglo-French, Old French asez “enough,” from unattested Vulgar Latin ad satis “to sufficiency”; see also assai 1
Explanation
An asset is something you have that is positive. It can mean a piece of property, a piece of equipment, an ability, or even a quality. "Her facility with math is an asset when it comes to figuring out the restaurant tab. She is an asset to the group." A person's overall financial picture is determined by lining up everything they own in the asset column, and everything they owe in the liability (or debit) column.
Vocabulary lists containing asset
Hatchet
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Trumps
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This Week in Words: March 30–April 5, 2019
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The sanctions include asset freezes, travel bans, and restrictions on services from U.S. companies.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
They say that the 5% share-price drop that greeted the lender’s third-quarter update was overdone, and that they see little evidence so far of a marked deterioration in asset quality or losses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
The day before the Connecticut primary, three of them published an op-ed calling Larson an “irreplaceable” asset to their cause.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
The tried and true disciplines — diversification across and within asset classes and periodic rebalancing — do not make headlines.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 17, 2026
She knew Sasha would be fine at school—if anything, the skirts gave them a little extra cachet at Maybeck, where unconventionality was an asset.
From "The 57 Bus" by Dashka Slater
A nine-year-old chip still running and generating sales also gives some credence to the idea that chips are viable assets to lend against.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
Affiliated or related-party assets, while legal, are between businesses that have ties and pose potential conflicts of interest; they require disclosure and typically extra regulatory scrutiny.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
Each of the team ETFs will typically hold at least 80% of assets in those futures, along with other derivatives that reference that team’s index.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 18, 2026
AIMA, whose members manage more than $4.5 trillion in assets, said that eliminating the rule could shift trading activity from public stock exchanges toward less-transparent platforms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
The accounting procedures used to measure these assets are frequently quite artificial, and there are other complicating factors which are obvious with a little thought.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
