fetish
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: fĕtʹĭsh
enpr: fēʹtĭsh
ipa: /ˈfɛt.ɪʃ/
ipa: /ˈfiː.tɪʃ/
rhymes: -ɛtɪʃ
rhymes: -iːtɪʃ
Forms: form: fetishes
form: fetich
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Italic *fakjō
Latin faciō
Proto-Indo-European *-tós
Proto-Italic *-tos
Latin -tus
Latin factus
Latin -īcius
Latin factīcius
Portuguese feitiçobor.
French fétichebor.
English fetish
Borrowed from French fétiche, from Portuguese feitiço, from Latin factīcius (“artificial”). Doublet of factitious.
Senses: examples: text: The idols and fetishes were being dressed up and whitewashed, receiving sacrifices.
ref: 1958, Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King:
glosses: Something which is believed to possess, contain, or cause spiritual or magical powers; an amulet or a talisman.
examples: text: This was the trunk of a large wooden doll […] now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. […] The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg
ref: 1860, George Eliot, chapter VI, in The Mill on the Floss, Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons:
qualifier: animism
glosses: A figure representing the spirit of a deity, human, or animal; an idol or voodoo doll.
examples: text: I know a guy who has a foot fetish.
text: a fetish for leather
text: The first time, I was confused. His needs were obscure to me, and what I could perceive of them seemed to me ridiculous, laughable, like a fetish for lace-up shoes.
ref: 1985, Margaret Atwood, “Soul Scrolls”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 163:
synonyms: kink
objectophilia
glosses: Sexual fixation to or arousal at something abnormally sexual or nonsexual, such as an object or a nonsexual part of the body.
examples: text: He has been talking about the same topic for hours on end, I suspect he may have a fetish
text: However, I am not prone to sensitiveness, and the following of a sense of duty, wherever it may lead, has always been a kind of fetich with me throughout my life; which may account for the honors bestowed upon me by three republics and the decorations and friendships of an old and powerful emperor and several lesser kings, in whose service my sword has been red many a time.
ref: 1912 February–July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Under the Moons of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “On the Arizona Hills”, in A Princess of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., 1917 October, →OCLC, page 6:
text: We have a feeling that it must be "honest" work, because it is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish of manual work.
ref: 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXII, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC:
text: The most amusing was the Wastebasket Era, which combined the stacking fetish with a container fixation.
ref: 2010, Mark Osteen, One of Us: A Family's Life with Autism:
text: A leading candidate for this role in the case of women has been the soap fetish.[…]Given this general cultural background the reasons for the rise of the soap fetish are not hard to find.[…]Guilt, as one of the propellers of the soap fetish, does not confine its thrust to the desire to wash dirty hands or erase the blots from the copybook.
ref: 2014 [1980], John Carroll, “The soap fetish”, in Sceptical Sociology, page 124:
text: A locavore (local plus the -vore of carnivore, etc.) is someone who makes a fetish of eating locally produced food.
ref: 2019, Barry Blake, English Vocabulary Today: Into the 21st Century:
glosses: An irrational or abnormal preoccupation or fixation on some object or activity; an obsession.
glosses: A recurrent theme of a specific thing.
Derived terms: commodity fetish
factish
fet
fetish bean
fetisher
fetishic
fetishise
fetishism
fetishist
fetishistic
fetishization
fetishize
fetishlike
fetish-man
fetish mining
fetish priest
fetishwear
fetishy
finish fetish
foot fetish
hypnofetish