Detached

How to spell detached

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce detached

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does detached mean?

1. adjectiveNot joined to or connected with anything else; standing apart.
2. adjectiveShowing no emotional involvement; objective or aloof.
3. verbPast tense of detach: separated or unfastened one thing from another.

Detached in a sentence

• adjective

  They bought a detached house with a garden on every side.

• adjective

  The manager stayed calm and detached while everyone else panicked about the deadline.

• verb

  She detached the trailer from the car before unloading the boxes.

• adjective

  The instructions were printed on a detached sheet at the back of the booklet.

• adjective

  A good auditor keeps a detached view of the figures and ignores office gossip.

• verb

  The engineer detached the cable to test each section of the wiring.

Where does detached come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came into English from the French verb detacher, which means 'to unfasten' or 'to separate'. That verb was formed by adding the reversing prefix de- to attacher, 'to fasten', and both ultimately rest on the Old French estache, meaning a 'stake' or 'post' to which something could be tied. The underlying idea is therefore very physical: to detach something was literally to pull it free from the stake holding it in place. English borrowed the term in the 1600s, first in military contexts for soldiers 'detached' from a main body, and it later broadened to mean simply 'separated' and, figuratively, 'emotionally uninvolved'. The same estache root sits inside its mirror-image word 'attached', and noticing that shared family helps explain the otherwise odd 'tach' spelling in the middle.

How the word is built

• de- (off, away, reversal)
• tach (fasten, from Old French estache: stake, post)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)