Forms: 7–8 fetisso, (8 feitisso), (7 fateish, 9 feteesh, -tisch, -tishe, -tiss), 8– fetich(e, fetish. [a. F. fétiche, ad. Pg. feitiço sb. charm, sorcery (from which the earliest Eng. forms are directly adopted) = Sp. hechizo in same sense; a subst. use of feitiço adj. ‘made by art, artificial, skilfully contrived’ = Sp. hechizo, It. fattizio, OF. faitis (see FEATOUS):—L. factīcius FACTITIOUS.]
1. a. Originally, any of the objects used by the negroes of the Guinea coast and the neighbouring regions as amulets or means of enchantment, or regarded by them with superstitious dread. b. By writers on anthropology (following C. de Brosses, Le Culte des Dieux Fétiches, 1760) used in wider sense: An inanimate object worshipped by savages on account of its supposed inherent magical powers, or as being animated by a spirit.
A fetish (in sense 1 b) differs from an idol in that it is worshipped in its own character, not as the image, symbol, or occasional residence of a deity.
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, VI. xv. (1614), 651. Hereon were set many strawen Rings called Fatissos or Gods, and therein Wheat, with Water and Oyle, for their God, which they thinke eates the same.
1696. Ovington, Voy. Suratt, 67. They [these Africans] travel nowhere without their Fateish about them.
1723. J. Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea (1715), 102. There is also at Cabo Corso, a publick Fetish, the Guardian of them all; and that is the Rock Tabra.
1746. J. Barbot, Descr. Guinea, 230. The first sort of false gold is mix’d with silver or copper, and cast into sundry shapes and sizes, which some there call Fetissos, signifying in Portuguese charms.
1761. Brit. Mag., II. 294/2. The chief fetiche is the snake, who has here such extraordinary honours conferred upon him, as cannot but raise our astonishment.
1803. T. Winterbottom, Sierra Leone, I. vii. 123. They seldom or never drink spirits, wine, &c. without spilling a little of it upon the ground, and wetting the gree-gree, or fetish, hung round their neck: at the same time they mutter a kind of short prayer. Ibid., I. xiv. 228. The nearer we approach Benin the more zealous are the natives in the worship of idols. These are called Fe-teesh, Dii Minores, and may be represented by a snake, leopard, alligator, stone, tree, &c. in which the tutelary power or divinity is supposed to dwell.
1809–10. Coleridge, The Friend (1837), III. 84. As well might the poor African prepare for himself a fetisch by plucking out the eyes of the eagle or the lynx, and enshrining the same, worship in them the power of vision.
1851–9. Prichard, in A Manual of Scientific Enquiry, 265. Others, like the African nations, worship fetiches, or visible objects in which they suppose some magical or supernatural power to be concealed, capable of exercising an influence on their destiny, and of ensuring success in any undertaking.
1865. Livingstone, Zambesi, xxv. 523. A greegree, or fetish, is thrown away as useless when the consecrating nostrum is discovered to be inoperative for the purpose for which it was procured.
1879. W. Hepworth, in Encycl. Brit. (9th ed.), IX. 118/2. If the wishes of the worshipper be not granted, all a savage’s rather powerful vocabulary of abuse is exhausted upon the fetich. It is kicked, stamped upon, dragged through the mud. Change of luck, however, produces apologies, and promises of future regard and worship.
c. fig. Something irrationally reverenced.
1837. Emerson, Addr. Amer. Schol., Wks. (Bohn), II. 183. Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down.
1867. Goldwin Smith, Three English Statesmen (1882), 192. He [Pitt] was a worshipper of Constitutional Monarchy. It was his Fetish.
1870. Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. I. (1873), 140. Men are mentally no less than corporeally gregarious, and that public opinion, the fetish even of the nineteenth century, makes men, whether for good or ill, into a mob, which either hurries the individual judgment along with it, or runs over and tramples it into insensibility.
† 2. In representations of negro language: Incantation, worship; a magical or religious rite or observance; an oath. Obs.
1705. Bosman, Guinea, x. 148. They cry out, Let us make Fetiche; by which they express as much, as let us perform our Religious Worship, and see or hear what our God saith. In like manner, if they are injured by another, they make Fetiche to destroy him in the following manner: they cause some Victuals and Drink to be Exorcised by their Feticheer or Priest, and scatter it in some place which their Enemy is accustomed to pass; firmly believing, that he who comes to touch this conjured Stuff shall certainly dye soon after.
1727. W. Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave Trade (1734), 22. The Lord of the Place had taken his Fetiche or Oath, in presence of a French and Dutch Gentleman. Ibid., 59. They have all their particular Fetiches … Some are to eat no Sheep, others no Goats.
1803. Mar. Edgeworth, Grateful Negro (1832), 245 note. An old Koromantyn negro, the chief instigator and oracle of the insurgents in that parish, who had administered the fetish, or solemn oath, to the conspirators, and furnished them with a magical preparation, which was to render them invulnerable, was fortunately apprehended, convicted, and hung up with all his feathers and trumperies about him.
1828. G. W. Bridges, Ann. Jamaica, II. xix. 404. To take a fetiche is to take an oath, and to make a fetiche is to render worship.
† 3. (See quot.) Obs.
1705. Bosman, Guinea, vi. 73–4. The Gold which is brought us by the Dinkirans is very pure, except only that ’tis too much mixed with Fetiche’s, which are a sort of Artificial Gold composed of several Ingredients.
4. attrib. and Comb. a. simple attrib., as fetish-ceremony, -day, -gold, -house, -priest, -worship. b. objective, as fetish-monger, -worshipper, -worshipping; also fetish-man, -woman, (a) one who claims to have communion with and power over fetishes, a fetish-priest; (b) a fetish-worshipper.
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, VI. xv. (1614), 649. Causing her to eat salt with divers *Fetisso ceremonies hereafter mentioned.
1819. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, II. iv. 266. In Ashantee there is not a common *fetish day, as on the coast.
1723. J. Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea (1735), 183. The *Fetish-Gold is that which the Negroes cast into various Shapes and wear as Ornaments at their Ears, Arms, and Legs, but chiefly at their Head, entangled very dextrously in the Wool.
1819. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, II. iii. 254. The gold buried with members of the royal family, and afterwards deposited with their bones in the *fetish house at Bantama is sacred, and cannot be used but to redeem the capital from the hands of an enemy, or in extreme national distress; and even then, the King must avoid the sight of it, if he would avoid the fatal vengeance of the fetish or deity.
1713. J. Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea (1735), 101. The Cunning of the *Fetish-Man (or Priest) who is consulted with a Present always.
1836. Marryat, Midsh. Easy, xvi. 90. The greatest warrior of the place, who went away in wrath to the fetish-man, and throwing him his gold armlets asked for a fetish against his rival.
1889. A Hilliard Atteridge, A Protestant Criticism of Protestant Missions, in The Dublin Review, Jan. 134. I wish to say nothing offensive when I point out that even the Moslem missionary is, up to a certain point, a teacher of truth, and a rude tribe of fetishmen and idol-worshippers may be the better for his message.
1888. Scott. Leader, 9 Oct., 4. The innate separatism of the Unionist *fetishmonger stands confessed.
1877. trans. Tiele’s Outlines of the History of Religion, 10. The power possessed by the magicians and *fetish priests is by no means small, and in some cases they are even organised into hierarchies.
1713. J. Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea (1735), 104. At Accra they have *Fetish-Women also, so by Descent, who pretend Divination, give Answers to all Questions, and, like our Fortune-tellers, are continually bubbling the weaker.
1870. Lubbock, The Origin of Civilisation, i. (1875), 22. The Fetich women in Dahome, says Burton, ‘were easily dispersed by their likenesses being sketched.’
1807. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., XXIII. 539/2. The veneration for the Lares was originally a *fetiche-worship, like that of the negroes for their pots and pans.
1860. Tristram, The Great Sahara, i. 16. In all countries there will be found among the most ignorant some debasing superstition, and it is to be feared that the traces of Fetish worship in Algiers are not worse than may be discovered elsewhere, under the shadow of a purer and holier faith.
1857. The Saturday Review, III. 18 April, 345/2. Why, what were the miserable *fetish-worshippers whom Wilberforce and Buxton consumed the flower of their life and strength in rescuing from the cruelty of professed Christians?
1860. W. G. Clark, Naples and Garibaldi, 54. For any other parallel one must go among *fetish-worshipping savages.
