fetish Look up fetish at Dictionary.com
1613, fatisso, from Port. fetiço "charm, sorcery," originally feitiço "made artfully, artificial," from L. facticius "made by art," from facere "to make" (see factitious). L. facticius in Sp. has become hechizo "magic, witchcraft, sorcery." Probably introduced by Port. sailors and traders as a name for charms and talismans worshipped by the inhabitants of the Guinea coast of Africa. Popularized in anthropology by C. de Brosses' Le Culte des Dieux Fétiches (1760), which influenced the word's spelling in Eng. (Fr. fétiche, also from the Port. word). Figurative sense of "something irrationally revered" is Amer.Eng. 1837. Fetishism in the purely psycho-sexual sense first recorded 1897 in writings of Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939).
"In certain perversions of the sexual instinct, the person, part of the body, or particular object belonging to the person by whom the impulse is excited, is called the fetish of the patient." [E. Morselli in "Baldwin Dictionary of Philosophy," 1901]