Definition of "fetish"

The idols and fetishes were being dressed up and whitewashed, receiving sacrifices.

1958, Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

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.

1985, Margaret Atwood, “Soul Scrolls”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, page 163

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.

1912 February–July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Under the Moons of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co.; republished as “On the Arizona Hills”, in A Princess of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., 1917 October, page 6

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 […]

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.

2014 , John Carroll, “The soap fetish”, in Sceptical Sociology, page 124