Fete

a. To entertain; to feast; to give a festival in honor of; as, to fête royalty. Fête-champêtre, ( fāt - sham-pā'tr,) n. [Fr.] A festival held in the open air; an al fresco entertainment; a picnic. Feth ard, a town of Ireland, co. Tipperary, 8 m. S.E. of Cashel; pop. 4,306. Fe'tich, Fetish, n . [Fr. fétic he , from Lat. fact it i us .] An object of idol-worship among certain of the African negro tribes. Fetichism, Feticism, (fët'i-shizm,) n. [Fr. fet i chis me.] The worshipping of a fetich. The word fetich is said to be derived from the Portuguese word fetiso , bewitched, or po e ed by fairies, and was applied by them to the object worshipped by the negroes of Africa. Hence the term has come to be generally received, and is applied to anything in nature or art to which a magical power is ascribed, as stones, carved images, . Fetichism is the worship of material substances, and prevails very extensively among barbarous nations, especially those of the negro race. Among them, tribes, families, and individuals have their respective fetiches; which are often objects casually selected, as stones, weapons, ve els, plants, ., and the rude worshipper does not hesitate to chastise, or even throw away or destroy his fetich, if it does not seem to gratify his desires. "To transfer," says Mr. Grote, "to inanimate objects the sensitive as well as the willing and designing attributes of human beings, is among the early and wide-spread instincts of mankind, and one of the primitive forms of religion; and although the enfargement of reason and experience gradually displaces this elementary fetichism, and banishes it from the regions of reality into those of conventional fictions, yet the force of momentary pa ion will often suffice to supersede the acquired habit, and even an intelligent man may be impelled, in a moment of agonizing pain, to kick or beat the lifele object from which he has suffered." History of Greece, vol. v.