sap·phic

(săf′ĭk)

adj.

Of or relating to lesbianism.

[After Sappho, known for her homoerotic poetry.]

sap′phism (săf′ĭz′əm) adj.

sap′phist n. & adj.

Sap·phic

(săf′ĭk)

adj.

1. Of or relating to the Greek poet Sappho.

a. Of, relating to, or being a verse characteristic of Sappho, containing 11 syllables and consisting of a trochee, a spondee or trochee, a dactyl, a trochee, and a spondee or trochee.

b. Relating to or being a stanza of three such verses followed by a verse consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee or trochee.

c. Relating to or being an ode made up of such stanzas.

d. Of, relating to, or being a verse, stanza, or poem in accentual-syllabic meter composed in imitation of Sapphic quantitative verse.

A Sapphic meter, verse, stanza, or ode.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

sapphism

(ˈsæfɪzəm)

a less common word for lesbianism. See lesbianism

[C19: after Sappho, who is believed to have been a lesbian]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

sap•phism

(ˈsæf ɪz əm)

n.

female homosexuality.

[1885–90]

sap′phist, n.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

sapphism - female homosexuality

lesbianism

gayness, homoeroticism, homosexualism, homosexuality, queerness - a sexual attraction to (or sexual relations with) persons of the same sex

tribadism - a form of lesbianism that simulates heterosexual intercourse

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

Their suspected sapphism made the couple the target of attacks, true--but it also served as an inspiration for many self-avowed female lovers of their own sex, both in the lifetime of the Ladies of Llangollen and in the centuries since.

Hermitesses

[and] suggests that sapphism, though unspeakable, may also be desired" (Lanser 10).

Vegetable love: reimagining sexuality in Frankenstein and "Christabel."

11, Pamela Dunbar describes sapphism as 'a modish nineties narcissism'.

'In their nakeds': Katherine Mansfield, Freud and Neurasthenia at Bad Worishofen

The publication of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, which he originally intended to title Les Lesbiennes, is the starting point for Myriam Robic's comprehensive study of sapphism in French poetry from the period 1846-1889.

Robic, Myriam. "Femmes damnees." Saphisme et poesie (1846-1889)

Sapphism, he says, is of 'equal ardour' as male homosexuality, but it involves less fantasy than its masculine homosexual counterpart: 'feminine love is less artistic and less about adoration than is masculine love' (p718)--another formulation whose unselfconscious partisanship cannot wholly obscure the radical potential of its logic.

'Stealing silk is my delight': Gaetan Gatian de Clerambault and the sexual politics of poststructuralist feminism

Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern British Lesbian Culture.

'The rose of no man's land [?]': femininity, female identity, and women on the Western Front

But I find that "lesbian" is not simply a placeholder for women who loved women; I think it can give us a useful shortcut for evoking a whole range of words that have been used to describe attachments between women, ranging from such seemingly neutral words as sapphism, sexual inversion, and homosexuality to pornographic slang such as tribade, fricatrice, and "doing the flats." Like Ellis, I think the word "lesbian" still has an important place in our vocabulary for the study of sexual behaviors among women, though I agree with Nan Alamilla Boyd that it may be most useful to see "lesbian" as a historical artifact created at a particular period and used only intermittently as a self-defining noun.

The History of Lesbian History

Lesbian dames; Sapphism in the long eighteenth century.

Lesbian dames; Sapphism in the long eighteenth century

Knopp " 'If I saw you would you kiss me?' Sapphism and Subversiveness of Virginia Woolf's Orlando," in Sexual Sameness: Textual Differences in Lesbian and Gay Writing, ed.

Parler-Entre-Elles: possibilities of a less Phallocentric Symbolic Economy in Virginia Woolf's Orlando

"'If I Saw You Would You Kiss Me?': Sapphism and the Subversiveness of Virginia Woolf's Orlando." PMLA 103.1 (Jan 1988): 24-34.

Woolf's Orlando and the resonances of trans studies