Other forms: attached, attaching, attaches
Attach means to fix one thing onto another so that it stays there. A name badge clipped to a jacket, a hook screwed into the back of a door, a photo taped to the fridge.
The pattern is attach A to B, and the TO stays: you attach the label to the box. Email has taken the word over — you attach a file, and the file itself becomes an attachment. With people it turns warm, because to be attached to someone or something is to be fond of it, which is why the old car was hard to sell. You also attach importance, blame or conditions to things, where nothing is fastened at all. In the passive it splits again: an attached building is joined to another one, and an attached person is already in a relationship.
1verbattachTo fix or join one thing firmly to another.
“He attached the trailer to the car and checked the lights.”
2verbsendTo send a file along with an email or message.
“I have attached the invoice to this email.”
3verbfeelTo feel fondness for someone or something, in the form be attached to.
“The children were attached to the old dog and cried for a week.”
4verbconnectTo connect a quality such as importance, blame or a condition to something.
“Do not attach too much meaning to one bad result.”
attach is a way of fixing things together.
Also accepted in games: fasten
Attach came through Old French atachier, a variant of estachier, to bind, built on estache, a stick or stake. Behind that stand Frankish and Proto-Germanic *stakô, a pole or stake — so to attach a thing was to tie it to a post. Its rougher twin is attack, which came out of the same Old French family.
Proto-Germanic
*stakô — pole, bar, stick, stake
Frankish
*stakkā
Old French
atachier
Middle English
attachen
English, today
attach
Built from
From Middle English attachen, from Old French atachier, variant of estachier (“bind”), derived from estache (“stick”), from Frankish stakkā, stakō (“stick”), from Proto-Germanic stakô (“pole, bar, stick, stake”). a doublet of attack. More at stake, stack. Displaced native þīedan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA