means To insert previously copied or cut text, images, or data into a document or field — or, in the older sense, to stick something using a soft adhesive.

from From the Latin 'pasta,' meaning a small square of dough or a paste — the very same root that gives us pasta on the dinner plate. It traveled through Late Latin and Old French ('paste') into Middle English, naming any soft, sticky, mouldable substance, including the flour-and-water glue used to fix paper to paper. When computing borrowed the word in the late 20th century, it kept that gluey spirit: 'copy and paste' literally pictures you sticking a clipping somewhere new, just without the mess.