Meaning

noun personal as opposed to real property; any tangible movable property (furniture or domestic animals or a car etc)

originFrom Middle English chatel, from Old French chatel, from Medieval Latin capitāle (English capital), from Latin capitālis (“of the head”), from caput (“head”) + -alis (“-al”). Compare the doublet cattle (“cows”), which is from an Anglo-Norman variant. Compare also capital and kith and kine (“all one’s possessions”), which also use “cow” to mean “property”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0