fetish
UK/ˈfɛt.ɪʃ/
fetish noun: something which is believed to possess, contain, or cause spiritual or magical powers; an amulet or a talisman.
Noun
fetish (countable and uncountable, plural fetishes)
- Something which is believed to possess, contain, or cause spiritual or magical powers; an amulet or a talisman.
- The idols and fetishes were being dressed up and whitewashed, receiving sacrifices.1958, Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
- A figure representing the spirit of a deity, human, or animal; an idol or voodoo doll.
- 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.1860, George Eliot, chapter VI, in The Mill on the Floss, Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons
- "It is not difficult for a negro to believe that he is a Zombie, and a very bad one at that. The step to Baron Samedi is simple. Mr. Big encourages the idea by having the Baron's fetish at his elbow. You saw it in his room."1954, Ian Fleming, “Allumeuse”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 110
- Sexual fixation to or arousal at something abnormally sexual or non-sexual, such as an object or a non-sexual part of the body.
- I know a guy who has a foot fetish.
- a fetish for leather
- Synonyms:
- kink, objectophilia
- An irrational or abnormal preoccupation or fixation on some object or activity; an obsession.
- He has been talking about the same topic for hours on end, I suspect he may have a fetish
- 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...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...
- A recurrent theme of a specific thing.
fetish meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
fetish in Tamil
- உயிரில்லாப்பொருள்களை வணங்குதல், மூட பக்தி
fetish in Urdu
- گنڈا, تعویذ, ٹونا, ٹوٹکا
fetish in Bengali
- প্রতিমা, ফেটিশ, ভক্তিবস্তু, দেবমূর্তি, ভক্তির পাত্র, ভালবাসার ব্যক্তি
fetish in Malayalam
- obsession, fixation, compulsion
- ഏകചിന്തിനിരതത്വം, സ്ഥിരണം, ബാധ, ഒഴിയാബാധ, അഭിനിവേശം, അതിരുകടന്ന മാനസികബന്ധം
- charm, juju, talisman
- രക്ഷ, ഏലസ്സ്, അരക്കുഴൽ, തകിട്, ഐക്കല്ല്, തകടും കൂടും
More languagesFewer languages
- fetish in Vietnamese
- ái vật
Examples of fetish in a sentence
- 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.1985, Margaret Atwood, “Soul Scrolls”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 163:
- 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.1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXII, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz...
- The most amusing was the Wastebasket Era, which combined the stacking fetish with a container fixation.2010, Mark Osteen, One of Us: A Family's Life with Autism:
- A locavore (local plus the -vore of carnivore, etc.) is someone who makes a fetish of eating locally produced food.2019, Barry Blake, English Vocabulary Today: Into the 21st Century:
Synonyms of fetish
Forms of fetish
| plural | fetishes |
|---|---|
| alternative form (archaic) | fetich |
Origin of fetish
Borrowed from French fétiche, from Portuguese feitiço, from Latin factīcius (“artificial”). Doublet of factitious.
Words formed from fetish
Phrases with fetish
Words that rhyme with fetish
Questions about fetish
- What does fetish mean?
- Fetish means something which is believed to possess, contain, or cause spiritual or magical powers; an amulet or a talisman.
- What is fetish in Tamil?
- Fetish in Tamil is உயிரில்லாப்பொருள்களை வணங்குதல், மூட பக்தி. See Fetish meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use fetish in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is fetish?
- Fetish is a noun.
- How do you pronounce fetish?
- Fetish is pronounced /ˈfɛt.ɪʃ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of fetish?
- The plural of fetish is fetishes.
Words near fetish in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: fetish (page history and authors); fetish (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fetish (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fetish (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fetish (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-fetish.ogg, en-au-fetish.ogg.
Cite this entry: “fetish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fetish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.