Etymologically
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fetish

Etymology and origin of the English word fetish

History

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈfɛt.ɪʃ/, /ˈfiː.tɪʃ/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French fétiche,[2][3] from Portuguese feitiço (“charm, sorcery”), a noun use of an adjective meaning “artificial”,[2][4][3][5] from Latin factīcius (“made by art, artificial”),[2][4][3][5] from facere “to make”.[4] Early English forms fatisso and fetisso came directly from Portuguese.[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first named objects used as amulets or charms by peoples of the Guinea coast of West Africa, as described by Portuguese traders.[6][4]

Semantic evolution

Writers on anthropology widened it to any inanimate object worshipped for its supposed magical powers.[6] By 1837 it was used figuratively for something irrationally revered,[6] and in 1901 psychology adopted it for an object or body part that is a habitual focus of sexual desire.[6][2][3] More loosely it now means any obsessive fixation.[2][1]

Timeline

  • 1610s – fatisso;[4] Merriam-Webster and the OED date the word 1613.[3][6]
  • 1837 – something irrationally reverenced.[6]
  • 1901 – the psychological sexual sense.[6]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. An object believed to have magical or spiritual power.
  2. Something given excessive or irrational reverence or attention.
  3. An object or non-sexual part of the body that arouses sexual desire.
  4. An obsessive preoccupation; a fixation.

Word family

  • fetishlike
  • fetishism
  • fetishize

Related words

  • factitious
  • feature

References

  1. [1] [2] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  3. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. [1] [2] [3] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  6. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
Cite this entry

“fetish.” Etymologically, 6 October 2026, https://etymologically.com/en/fetish. Accessed 6 October 2026.

Last edited on .