fetish (n.) 
"
material object regarded with awe as having mysterious powers or being the representative of a deity that may be worshipped through it," 1610s,
fatisso, from Portuguese
feitiço "charm, sorcery, allurement," noun use of an adjective meaning "artificial."
The Portuguese adjective is from Latin
facticius "made by art, artificial," from
facere "to make, do, produce, etc." (see
factitious, and compare French
factice "artificial," restored from Old French
faitise, from Latin facticius).
Via the French word, Middle English had
fetis, fetice (adj.) "cleverly made, neat, elegant" (of things), "handsome, pretty, neat" (of persons). But in the Middle Ages the Romanic derivatives of the word took on magical senses; compare Portuguese
feiticeria "sorcery, witchcraft,"
feiticeiro "sorcerer, wizard." Latin
facticius in Spanish has become
hechizo "artificial, imitated," also "bewitchment, fascination."
The specific Portuguese use of the word that brought it to English probably began among Portuguese sailors and traders who used the word as
a name for charms and talismans worshiped by the inhabitants of the Guinea coast of Africa. It was picked up and popularized in anthropology by Charles de Brosses' "Du culte des dieux fétiches" (1760), which influenced the word's spelling in English (French
fétiche also is borrowed 18c. from the Portuguese word).
Any
material image of a religious idea is an
idol; a
material object in which force is supposed to be concentrated is a Fetish; a material object, or a class of material objects, plants, or animals, which is regarded by man with superstitious respect, and between whom and man there is supposed to exist an invisible but effective force, is a Totem. [J. Fitzgerald Lee, "The Greater Exodus," London, 1903]
>> Figurative sense of "something irrationally revered, object of blind devotion" appears to be an extension made by the New England Transcendentalists (1837). For sexual sense (1897), see
fetishism.
(
OED)
-- and that's what you're trying to fit into a round hole here; an
abstraction from the actual definition --- which is a tangible, visible,
physical object.
and let's go see that link to "see
fetishism"
>>
fetishism (n.)
1801, "worship of fetishes," from
fetish +
-ism. Expanded in use by Comte taking it to denote a general type of primitive religion (animism). 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] << --
op.cit.
