noob question about sprites

[Retro64]

Basically sprites are any 2D assets in a video game, these include animation frames for characters, menus, items, fonts etc. (textures are not considered sprites because they are grouped with files of a model). The sprites are usually used for animations and fan games. 

If you want more info then take long look at its Wikipedia page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(..._graphics)

Hope this helps!