The Sapphic Sanctuary
What does sapphic mean?
Sapphic describes women and woman-aligned people who are attracted to other women. It works as an umbrella term, so it covers lesbians as well as bisexual, pansexual, and queer people, plus many nonbinary people who feel at home in that kind of attraction.
Last updated: July 19, 2026
People use the word two ways, and both are fine. Some treat it as a personal label. Others use it as a broad name for the whole community of women and woman-aligned people who love women.
You do not need one tidy orientation to fit under it. A lesbian is sapphic. So is a bi woman dating another woman. So is a nonbinary person who is drawn to women and feels the word suits them.
Dictionaries still define it plainly as relating to lesbians (Oxford Learner's Dictionary), but in everyday queer use it has stretched wider than that. If you want the narrower comparison, our page on the difference between sapphic and lesbian walks through it. The glossary entry keeps the short definition.