talisman

Talisman, one of the very few English nouns ending in -man which does not turn into -men in the plural (dragoman is another), denotes etymologically an ‘object consecrated by the completion of a religious ritual’. It comes via French talisman from medieval Greek télesmon, an alteration of late Greek télesma ‘consecrated object’. this in turn was derived from the verb teleī́n ‘complete’, hence ‘perform a ritual’, hence ‘consecrate’, which was based on télos ‘aim, result’ (source of English teleology (18^th c.)).