fetish

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English

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WOTD – 8 October 2008
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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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    Etymology tree
    Proto-Italic *fakjō
    Latin faciō
    Proto-Indo-European *-tós
    Proto-Italic *-tos
    Latin -tus
    Latin factus
    Latin -īcius
    Portuguese feitiçobor.
    English fetish

    Borrowed from French fétiche, from Portuguese feitiço, from Latin factīcius (“artificial”). Doublet of factitious.

    Pronunciation

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    Noun

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    fetish (plural fetishes)

    1. Something which is believed to possess, contain, or cause spiritual or magical powers; an amulet or a talisman. [from the early 17th c.]
      • 1958, Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King:
        The idols and fetishes were being dressed up and whitewashed, receiving sacrifices.
    2. (animism, dated) A figure representing the spirit of a deity, human, or animal; an idol or voodoo doll.
      • 1860, George Eliot, chapter VI, in The Mill on the Floss, Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons:
        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
    3. Sexual attraction to or arousal at something abnormally sexual or nonsexual, such as an object or a nonsexual part of the body. [from the early 19th c.]
      Synonym: kink
      I know a guy who has a foot fetish.
      a fetish for leather
      • 1985, Margaret Atwood, “Soul Scrolls”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 163:
        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.
    4. An irrational or abnormal preoccupation or fixation on some object or activity; an obsession. [from the 19th c.]
      a fetish for deficit reduction
      • 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:
        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.
      • 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXII, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC:
        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.
      • 2014 [1980], John Carroll, “The soap fetish”, in Sceptical Sociology, page 124:
        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.

    Derived terms

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    Translations

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    Anagrams

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    Juba Arabic

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    Etymology

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    From Arabic فَتَّشَ (fattaša).

    Pronunciation

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    • IPA(key): /ˈɸetiɕ/, [ˈɸe.tɪɕ]

    Verb

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    fetish

    1. to inspect
    2. to search, look up
      fetish kelma ta ingliizi al ita ma arif awal
      look up the English word you don't know first

    References

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    • Ian Smith, Morris Timothy Ama (1985) A Dictionary of Juba Arabic & English‎[1], 1st edition, Juba: The Committee of The Juba Cheshire Home and Centre for Handicapped Children, page 133
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