Assets are everything a business owns that has value. Total assets, sell off the assets, asset value.
In accounting, assets sit on one side of a balance sheet and liabilities on the other, and the difference is what the business is worth. Fixed assets are buildings and machinery; current assets are cash and stock. Frozen assets are ones a court has stopped anybody from moving. The singular is used figuratively of people: she is a real asset to the team. Note asset-stripping, meaning buying a company to sell its parts.
1nounassetsEverything a business owns that has value.
“The company sold some of its assets, including two factories, to pay its debts.”
2nounusefulA useful or valuable person or quality.
“Her patience is the department's greatest asset.”
assets is things of value.
Old French assez means enough, from Latin ad satis, to sufficiency. In old law, assets meant enough property to settle the debts of an estate, and the modern accounting sense grew from that legal test.
Anglo-Norman
asetz
English, today
assets
From Anglo-Norman asetz, from asez. From Anglo-Norman asetz, from Old French assez (“enough”). Originally singular, with the meaning "enough to meet liabilities"; later reanalyzed as a plural form.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA