the.com/fetish

means An object, body part, or scenario that has become fixed as a necessary trigger for sexual arousal — or, in looser use, an irrational devotion to a thing far beyond its practical worth.

from From Portuguese 'feitiço' meaning 'charm' or 'sorcery,' itself from Latin 'facticius' — 'made by art,' artificial. Portuguese traders used the word for the carved charms and amulets they saw West African peoples treat as imbued with power. European colonizers exoticized this into a whole theory of 'primitive' religion. The word drifted into psychology in the late 1800s, when researchers like Alfred Binet borrowed it to describe erotic attachment to objects — keeping the core idea intact: something ordinary, invested with disproportionate, almost magical power over desire.