The Sapphic Sanctuary
Where does the word sapphic come from?
Sapphic comes from Sappho, a Greek poet who lived on the island of Lesbos around 630 to 570 BCE and wrote about love between women. English used sapphic for her poetic meter first. The sense tied to attraction between women dates to the 1890s.
Last updated: July 19, 2026
Sappho wrote lyric poetry about desire and longing for women. Most of it survives only in fragments, so much of what we know about her comes from those scraps and from later writers. Her home island, Lesbos, is also where the word lesbian comes from.
The English adjective arrived through French saphique and Latin Sapphicus, from the Greek Sapphikos, meaning of Sappho. At first it described her verse and her distinctive meter. The meaning we use now, about attraction between women, is recorded from the 1890s (Etymonline).
The word had a quiet second life online before it went mainstream. One of its early digital uses was as the name of a 1980s mailing list for queer women, back when email mostly lived in universities.