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The Fetish Etymology Side Note: First there was the Spanish word Hechizo (witch craft or witch-made) which turned into Feitiço in Portuguese. The Portuguese Feitiço swam over the North Sea to France and became Fetiche (actually, between you and I, Feitiço flew to France on a broom; but since we are talking about the XV century we don’t want to risk misinterpretation, you know). Once in France it was only a matter of time for the English to snatched the foreign-sounding word, but because they did not how to spell it, Fetiche became Fetish. Unfortunately this was at the time when the Europeans were trading with humans from Africa and because they did not know much about Africans religions they use the word fetish to denominate all those religious rituals. Karl Marx felt that merchandise possessed a bewitching aspect and thus it was evil, so he called this malicious attraction a fetish. Once in the German language, it was only a matter of time (again) for mister Sigmund Freud to muddle with its meaning to apply it to the phenomena he was observing in his clinic. With this last meaning fetish (fetiche in Spanish) came back to its mother tongue; completely transformed.