Attaches

How to spell attaches

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce attaches

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does attaches mean?

1. verbFastens or joins one thing to another, or includes a file or document with a message.

Attaches in a sentence

• She always attaches the receipt to her expense report.

• The bracket attaches firmly to the wall with two screws.

Where does attaches come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present-tense form of the verb 'attach', which English took from the Old French 'atachier', later 'attacher', meaning 'to fasten, fix, or bind'. That French verb was built on the root 'estache', meaning a stake or post, something you could literally tie a thing to, and that root came in turn from a Germanic source related to the modern English word 'stake'. The same family gave us 'attack', which entered through Italian and shares the underlying idea of fixing or engaging upon something. English borrowed 'attach' in the 1300s, at first with legal senses such as seizing property or arresting a person, before the everyday meaning of fastening one thing to another took over. The doubled letters trip writers up because the prefix 'at-' (an assimilated form of Latin 'ad-', meaning 'to') sits flush against the 'tach' root, giving the two t's and the 'ch' spelling that the modern sense of fixing or joining preserves.

How the word is built

• at- (to, variant of ad-)
• tach (stake, post, fasten)
• -es (third-person singular present)