Episode Details

This episode discusses the history of words for women who loved women throughout recorded European history. What words were used? Where did they come from? What shades of meaning did they have? And how did those meanings change over time?

In this episode we talk about the following words:

• Greek: hetairistriai
• Greek and Latin: tribas, tribades
• Latin: lesbian
• English: sapphist
• Latin: fricatrix
• Words related to “sodomite” and “bugger”
• The tricky case of “hermaphrodite” and “virago”
• Slang terms like rubster, lollepot, and tommy
• Arabic: suhaqiyya, tharifa
• Links to entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project that discuss these and related words can be found in the “Vocabulary Terms” section of this blog entry

A transcript of this podcast is available here.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)