assign

Assign is a verb with several related meanings centered on designation, transfer, or binding of value. Commonly, to assign is to designate someone for a task, to designate rights or property to another person, or to set a value or variable in a formal system. The noun assignment refers to the act or result of assigning, or to the thing that has been assigned.

In law and business, an assignment is a transfer of rights or property from one party (the assignor) to another (the assignee). This can involve contract rights, claims, or ownership interests, such as assigning a lease or a debt. An assignment often takes effect without releasing the original party from obligations unless a separate novation or consent changes the relationships. Many contracts include anti-assignment clauses, and some rights are non-assignable by statute or policy. Assignments are common in finance, insurance, and regulatory contexts, where receivables or benefits are shifted to a third party.

In computing and mathematics, assignment refers to binding a value to a variable. Most programming languages use an assignment operator to store data, with syntax that varies by language (for example, the equals sign is widely used to assign, while some languages also offer short-hand forms like += or :=). In mathematics and optimization, the term appears in problems such as the assignment problem, which seeks the most cost-efficient pairing of agents and tasks.

Overall, assign captures the general notion of appointing, transferring, or binding something to a designated recipient or target.