Asset

How to spell asset

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce asset

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does asset mean?

1. nounA useful or valuable thing, person, or quality that provides an advantage.
2. nounAn item of property owned by a person or business that has monetary value.

Asset in a sentence

• Her calm manner under pressure is a real asset to the team.

• The house is the couple's largest single asset.

• Fluent Spanish proved to be a major asset during the negotiation.

• The company listed each asset on its annual balance sheet.

Where does asset come from?

Language of origin: French

The word traces back to the Latin phrase ad satis, meaning literally 'to enough' or 'to sufficiency', which passed into Anglo-Norman French as asetz. In medieval English law the term meant having sufficient property to settle a dead person's debts; if an estate had asetz, the heir had 'enough' goods to satisfy the creditors. English speakers heard the final s and mistook the singular legal word for a plural, so the form 'assets' was treated as many items, and the singular 'asset' was then carved back out of it as a brand new word, a process linguists call back-formation. From that legal beginning the meaning broadened in the nineteenth century to cover any item of value owned by a person or company, and then any useful quality or helpful person at all. The single s followed by the double t at the end is the spelling trap, since the original 'enough' root left no doubled consonant and the word is so often paired with its plural assets.

How the word is built

• asset (back-formed singular of assets, from Anglo-Norman asetz 'enough', ultimately Latin ad satis 'to sufficiency')