narcissus n.

late 14c., narcotik, "substance which directly induces sleep or allays sensibility and blunts the senses," from Old French narcotique (early 14c.), noun use of adjective, and directly from Medieval Latin narcoticum, from Greek narkōtikon, neuter of narkōtikos "making stiff or numb," from narkōtos, verbal adjective of narkoun "to benumb, make unconscious," from narkē "numbness, deadness, stupor, cramp" (also "the electric ray").

This has been connected to a PIE root *(s)nerq- "to turn, twist," with cognates in Germanic (Old Norse snara "to turn, swing, wind;" see snare (n.1)), but Beekes finds this "semantically far from convincing," and writes, "The structure of this word looks non-IE. Therefore, we should rather assume a Pre-Greek word *nark-." Sense of "any illegal drug" first recorded 1926, American English. Related: Narcotics.

1905, from German Narzissismus, coined 1899 (in "Die sexuellen Perversitäten"), by German psychiatrist Paul Näcke (1851-1913), on a comparison suggested 1898 by Havelock Ellis, from Greek Narkissos, name of a beautiful youth in mythology (Ovid, "Metamorphoses," iii.370) who fell in love with his own reflection in a spring and was turned to the flower narcissus (q.v.). Narcissus himself as a figure of self-love is attested by 1767. Coleridge used the word in a letter from 1822.

But already Krishna, enamoured of himself, had resolved to experience lust for his own self; he manifested his own Nature in the cow-herd girls and enjoyed them. [Karapatri, "Lingopasana-rahasya," Siddhanta, II, 1941-2]

Sometimes erroneously as narcism.