Standard Lemma guide

retifism

noun · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

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1

noun

Meaning 1

The sexual fetish of attraction to shoes.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: uncountable

Examples

  • 2004, Cameron Kippen, Curtin University of Technology (Perth, Western Australia) Department of Podiatry https://web.archive.org/web/20071018035445/http://podiatry.curtin.edu.au/fetish.html In the interests of intellectual exchange the author attempts to describe foot fetish and shoe retifism.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

Adapted borrowing of German Retifismus, coined by German dermatologist and sexologist Iwan Bloch in reference to the French novelist Nicolas-Edme Rétif’s Le Pied de Fanchette (Fanchette’s Foot, 1769), about a girl who is hounded by shoe-fetishists. By surface analysis, Rétif + -ism.