attach

The root sense the others branch from: Middle English attachen, from Old French atachier, built on estache, "stick". To attach was first to fix something to a stake, and attack is a doublet from the same source. The construction is attach X to Y, and detach is its plain undoing. An officer attached to a regiment shows how early the fastening became figurative.

Here the verb needs no object, because the thing itself does the clinging. Its Old French ancestor atachier comes from estache, "stick," so cling and stick sit close to its root. In prose this sense often takes an abstract subject and the preposition to. Henry Brougham writes in 1838 of the great interest "which attaches to the mere knowledge of these facts": the interest belongs to the facts as a label belongs to glass.

Here what gets attached is a value, a meaning or a curse, never a physical object. The set phrase is attach importance to, and the pattern always takes to. That separates it from the affection sense, which binds people rather than qualities. Bayard Taylor's "To this treasure a curse is attached" (1879) shows the passive, with the to-phrase moved to the front for weight.

Both voices work here. The passive, attached to a friend, describes a feeling someone holds. The active describes winning that feeling, as in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811): "incapable of attaching a sensible man". William Cowper's "by various ties attaches man to man" (1782) shows the full pattern, attach someone to someone, with the tie named or implied.

A lawyer's use, intransitive and usually about timing: the question is when a right or burden attaches. Thomas M. Cooley's treatise on taxation (1886) asks "at what time the lien for taxes will attach", and the bare "dower will attach" shows the typical subjects. Nobody fastens a lien or dower on anything. These are nouns that come into force by themselves once their conditions are met.