How to Use fetishism in a Sentence

fetishism

noun
  • Oh, and the play’s about foot fetishism and master-slave role play, too.
    — Matthew J. Palm, orlandosentinel.com, 17 May 2021
  • Themes of masochism are everywhere in his books, as is a foot-fetishism grounded in self-abasement.
    — Brad Leithauser, WSJ, 7 Jan. 2022
  • Gleaming in a way that felt unhealthy — not with curiosity, but with fetishism.
    — Vulture, 24 May 2023
  • Not everyone is down with designer fetishism for the under-10 set, of course.
    — Bobby Doherty, The Cut, 2 May 2018
  • This is where condescension, or fetishism, or novelty begins to creep in.
    — Richard Lawson, vanityfair.com, 19 Apr. 2017
  • Arguably, it’s intensified into a fetishism of how trans bodies look.
    — Emma Flint, Wired, 2 Dec. 2021
  • To achieve this coherence, one must be freed from all fetishism toward the past and commit to a wholly new adventure.
    — Elinore Weil, Artforum, 4 Mar. 2026
  • Early on, his OnlyFans page was a bacchanal of foot fetishism.
    — Jason Parham, WIRED, 19 Aug. 2019
  • This can be particularly attractive in an era of data fetishism.
    — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 20 Aug. 2024
  • In Marx’s terminology, this is a form of capital fetishism.
    — Literary Hub, 22 Sep. 2025
  • The outburst of Nazi fetishism caught some longtime observers off-guard, even with the rapper’s long history of poke-in-the-eye trolling.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 5 Jan. 2023
  • In mining the past, Soft Science sees new possibilities rather than a chance to indulge in retro fetishism.
    — Greg Kot, chicagotribune.com, 8 June 2018
  • While that show evoked the high drama of a Harlequin novel, Celine’s flirted openly with fetishism.
    — New York Times, 21 Mar. 2022
  • Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel, another film director.
    — Shania Russell, Entertainment Weekly, 4 Nov. 2025
  • Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel, another film director.
    — Glenn Garner, Deadline, 5 Nov. 2025
  • Today, online, pornography is so extreme and so varied, with such expressions of fetishism and other things that boys are seeing.
    — Laura McGann, Vox, 25 Mar. 2018
  • By that point, Gucci fetishism had become parodic and comical.
    — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 13 Sep. 2017
  • Often overlooked and also categorized with fetishism (also known as axilism), armpits are sensitive to both light and firm touch.
    — Essence, 11 Sep. 2025
  • The Beach Boys’ fetishism still resonates today, possibly because the cars of that era remain un-car-like in their coolness and appeal.
    — Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 22 July 2019
  • But Buck’s racial fetishism, theoretically easier to keep behind the bedroom door, was an open secret too.
    — Jesse Barron, New York Times, 16 Sep. 2020
  • While the fetishism for the pop music of a more innocent time can be cloying, Clarke’s emotional gloom has a way of leavening that sweetness with some real acid.
    — Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader, 17 May 2018
  • The dialogue lands somewhere between hardcore bullet fetishism and perpetual irony.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 20 May 2021
  • Our preliminary data indicate that there may be a rising display in foot-fetishism in the pornographic literature.
    — Ncbi Rofl, Discover Magazine, 17 Feb. 2012
  • There’s more to the novel, translated from the German by Daniel Bowles, than a purse-lipped satire of fetishism, but Kracht keeps it well below the surface.
    — Dan Piepenbring, Harpers Magazine, 30 June 2026
  • What is sadder in this specific case is that art, for those who are receptive to it, can actually resist this kind of commodity fetishism (as the Marxists call it).
    — Washington Post, 16 Mar. 2021
  • The effect is David Cronenberg’s body horror meets Guy Bourdin’s fashionable fetishism.
    — Vince Aletti, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2022
  • But the shops without the attractions also reduced the parks to their most unsavory aspects, that is places that exist as little more to buy products and encourage fetishism among collectors.
    — Los Angeles Times, 13 Dec. 2020
  • Gun fetishism is not part of the particular pain of British life, but last week Britain demonstrated the power of anti-Semitism to reshape politics.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 16 Dec. 2019
  • In its most recent season, though, the show’s ever-present commodity fetishism and obsessive materialism curdled a bit, going from joke to simple fact.
    — Daniel D'addario, Time, 12 Sep. 2017
  • The project satirizes the graphics fetishism of the video-game industry, where rendering water has long been a benchmark of technical sophistication.
    — Julian Lucas, The New Yorker, 30 June 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fetishism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: