asset
Pluralassets
- 1A thing or quality that has value, especially one that brings in a steady flow of money.
Their rental properties are assets that generate income every month.
Patience is an asset in any long negotiation.
Similaradvantage, strength, resource, benefit, plus
Oppositeliability, drawback, disadvantage, handicap
Note
The singular is the newcomer: English had assets first, from Anglo-Norman asetz and Old French assez, "enough," and asset was carved back out of the plural. The plural still does much of the work. In Boris Johnson's Brexit Day speech of 2020, a country's assets are its scientists, engineers and universities, which shows how easily the word stretches from property to people and talents.
- 2An item recorded on the left-hand side of a balance sheet, representing something the business owns and counts as valuable.
Accountants classified the patents as intangible assets.
Every asset on the balance sheet must be matched by a claim against it.
Oppositeliability
Note
Accountants use the word strictly. In double-entry bookkeeping it covers whatever sits on the left-hand, or debit, side of the balance sheet, valued for the future economic benefit it is expected to bring. In ordinary speech anything useful can be called an asset, as in the everyday "something valuable" sense. Here the word covers only what has actually been recorded on that side of the ledger.
- 3A person recruited to supply secret information to an intelligence service, often working covertly inside a target group.
The handler met the asset in a crowded market to avoid surveillance.
Several assets inside the ministry fed reports back to headquarters.
Similarinformant, source, agent, mole, spy
Note
Intelligence tradecraft uses the word for a recruited source rather than an employee. The asset supplies information or access, and a staff officer, the handler, runs the relationship for the agency. Keep the two roles apart, because a career officer is not an asset. The noun pairs naturally with verbs of control and risk: recruit, run, handle, protect, lose.
- 4A component, model, process, or framework of value that can be reused or built upon in other work.
Developers stored every reusable asset in a shared library.
Design assets from the first release were adapted for the mobile version.
Note
Software and systems engineering borrow the money word for anything built once and used again: a code module, a data model, a design pattern, a process framework. Its value lies in reuse across projects, which spares duplicated effort. The collocations follow that idea: reusable assets, a shared asset library, design assets. The word stays countable, so teams speak of an asset or many assets.
- 5A slang term for a person's sexually attractive body parts: a woman's breasts or buttocks, or a man's genitals.
She knew her curves were her greatest asset and dressed to highlight them.
The dancer's costume was designed to flaunt her assets.
Similarcharms
Note
Slang that flatters by borrowing the language of a portfolio, and it is nearly always plural. The stock phrase is nice assets, as when Deanna Chase's Spirits, Rock Stars, and a Midnight Chocolate Bar (2016) has a character size someone up approvingly. The ordinary "valuable thing" sense is so common that the innuendo depends entirely on context. In professional writing, a stray double meaning can come across as a leer.
Practice
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Origin
This is a back-formation from "assets," which came from Anglo-Norman "asetz," from Old French "assez" meaning "enough."