Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or relating to the Greek poet Sappho.
- adj. Of, relating to, or being an Aeolic verse of 11 syllables, consisting of a first part of 4 syllables, a central choriamb, and a final part of 3 syllables.
- adj. Relating to or being a stanza of three such verses followed by a verse consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee or trochee.
- adj. Relating to or being an ode made up of such stanzas.
- adj. Of, relating to, or being a verse, stanza, or poem in accentual meter composed in imitation of Sapphic quantitative verse.
- adj. Of or relating to lesbianism.
- n. A Sapphic meter, verse, stanza, or ode.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to Sappho, a Greek lyric poetess of Lesbos (about 600 b. c.), famed for the beauty and passionateness of her poems; in prosody, noting various meters used by the poetess Sappho. See phrases below.
- n. A Sapphic verse: used especially of the Lesser Sapphic verse (hendecasyllabic), and, in the plural, of the Lesser Sapphic system.
Wiktionary
- adj. Relating to the Greek poetess Sappho from Lesbos or her poetry.
- adj. Alternative capitalization of sapphic: relating to lesbianism; lesbian.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of or pertaining to Sappho, the Grecian poetess.
- adj. (Pros.) Belonging to, or in the manner of, Sappho; -- said of a certain kind of verse reputed to have been invented by Sappho, consisting of five feet, of which the first, fourth, and fifth are trochees, the second is a spondee, and the third a dactyl.
- n. (Pros.) A Sapphic verse.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. a meter used by Sappho and named after her
- adj. of or relating to or characterized by homosexual relations between woman
Etymologies
- From Ancient Greek Σαπφώ (Sapphō, "the Greek poet") + -ic. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The thing is, it actually is an inaccurate term, technically, and now it seems that "Sapphic" would be incorrect as well, given recent research.”
“Sapphic" is an alternative word for the practice, yes.”
“In fact, it was like a "a very special Santanisode" that saw the spitfire who once declared "the only straight I am is straight-up bitch" officially embracing her Sapphic self and showcased the always-delicious Naya Rivera's ability to be all sorts of fierce, funny and believably vulnerable.”
“And we can't express how thrilling it is to see Santana inching her way out of the resident bitch role and into a Sapphic star in the making.”
“Ladies on a rampage is the theme of this antic (and sometimes Sapphic) misadventure from Brooklyn filmmaker Zach Clark ("Modern Love Is Automatic").”
“Thankfully, this nonsense was offset by Paltrow's hilariously in-your-face Holly, Santana's heart-wrenching Sapphic confession to Brittany, and the Kurt-Burt chat that every gay teen should be blessed to have with a parent.”
“They are first glimpsed working late at Christine's gorgeously appointed home -- and, for a moment, you may think you're watching a Sapphic seduction, so obviously does Christine seem to be sending signals to Isabelle.”
The Huffington Post: Marshall Fine: HuffPost Review: Love Crime
“When pressed about her sexual preference, the Mildred Pierce and True Blood star admits that she dates women and elaborates on her Sapphic etiquette: I'm more kind of like the guy when it comes to dating girls.”
“In a separate but related development, sources close to Julie Burchill have strongly denied that Ms Burchill had a Sapphic fling with Ms Moir in 1983.”
“Not just the actual sodomites like myself, but the Sapphic Sisterhood, the Hamite Alliance, the League of Heathens and Infidels, Atheists Anonymous, a whole panoply of progressive thinkers, aligned and unaligned, to whom your rant reads as the ethically repugnant ravings of a sociopath, given that it has so little concern for aforesaid "empathy".”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Sapphic’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Prosody
Your terms and additions are welcome.
headless iamb, tailless trochee, dibrach, disyllable, trisyllable, tetrasyllable, pyrrhus, iamb, trochee, choree, choreus, tribrach and 203 more...
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Mythology
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Namesakes
Words derived from names, be they historical, literary, or mythological.
quixotic, cereal, odyssey, jovial, mercurial, erotic, achilles' heel, confucianism, lovecraftian, narcissism, echo, fallopian and 101 more...
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Learned List
apoplexy, autodidactic, causal, circuitous, circumambient, coalesce, comport, concatenate, counterintuitive, diegetic, eke, epistemology and 28 more...
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