sapphist

A word for a woman who loves other women. This love can cover everything from emotional, physical, spiritual, and sexual love. It is an older term for women who love women. It derives from the poet Sappho, who lived on the Isle of Lesbos. Sappho wrote poetry, mostly about women and loving women. It's a term that some women prefer over the ever popular and sometimes bastardized term lesbian. It's usually only a term that one woman can give herself (unless she still lives in Lesbos... but in that circumstance it means something different, and has no lesbian connotations).