Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Sappho |
SapphoNoun1. The Greek lyric poet of Lesbos; much admired although only fragments of her poetry have been preserved (6th century BC). Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
"Sappho" is a name that signifies or is derived from: "a sapphire", "a lapis lazuli". |
Date "Sappho" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1509. (references) |
Note: Sappho \Sap"pho\, noun. [See Sapphic.]. (Websters 1913) |
| Domain | Definitions |
19th Century Satire | A love-lorn poetess, who, failing to win the man she first loved, cured herself by jumping into the Mediterranean. She probably acted on the old advice, "There's plenty more fish in the sea!" Source: Foolish Dictionary, 1904. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Sappho (Greek Σαπφω, Sapphô) was an Ancient Greek poet, from the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, which was a cultural centre in the 7th century BC. She was born sometime between 630 BC and 612 BC. It was said that she was small and dark.
Sappho was married to a wealthy merchant, and they had a daughter named Cleis. She became very famous in her day for her poetry -- so much so that the city of Syracuse built a statue to honor her when she visited. Her family was politically active, which caused Sappho to travel a great deal. She was also noted during her life as the headmistress of a sort of Greek finishing school for girls. Most likely the objects of her poetry were her students.
She was a lyric poet who developed her own particular meter, known as sapphic meter, and she was credited for leading an aesthetic movement away from classical themes of gods, to the themes of individual human experience. Plato was so enamoured of her poetry that he referred to her as the "tenth Muse".
Sappho wrote mainly love poems, of which only fragments survive, save a single complete poem, Fragment 1, Hymn to Aphrodite. Given her reputation in the ancient world, since only fragments of her work remain, the world lost a valuable treasure in her work.
Some of her love poems were addressed to women, from which she developed a reputation for lesbianism. The word lesbian itself is due to her, being derived from the name of the island of Lesbos from which she came. (She is also the origin of its much rarer synonym sapphic, derived from her name.)
Due to its homosexual content--and because of its explicit eroticism--her work was disapproved of by the Christian church, which is arguably the main reason why most of it has not survived, due to a combination of neglecting to copy it and undoubtedly in some cases purposeful destruction.
While in the modern period this content is well known, in ancient and medieval times she was more famous for (according to legend) throwing herself off a cliff due to unrequited love for a male sailor named Phaon. However, this legend has no substantiation in Greek history, and it is generally believed that the legend was a fiction created by the Christian church to misdirect attention away from the overtones of her writing. (Of particular note is that a purported consort of hers was named Cercglas of Andros, literally "Penis, from the town of Man").
See also: list of bisexuals
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Sappho."
Crosswords: Sappho |
| Specialty definitions using "Sappho": Atossa ♦ Lesbian Poets, Leucadia ♦ Sapphics, Sappho of Toulouse ♦ Youth Restored. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Clever | Deathless Aphrodite on your rich-wrought throne. (references; author: Sappho) What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful. (references; author: Sappho) I loved you once long ago, Athis... you seemed to me a small, ungainly child. (references; author: Sappho) The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone. (references; author: Sappho) As shepherds trample underfoot a hyacinth on the mountainside, and on the ground the purple flower. (references; author: Sappho) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Darling Sappho (1968) Sappho '68 (1968) Auto a Sappho (1965) A Modern Sappho (1929) Sappho (1922) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Quotation |
Sappho | Deathless Aphrodite on your rich-wrought throne. |
| What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful. | |
| I loved you once long ago, Athis... you seemed to me a small, ungainly child. | |
| The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone. | |
| As shepherds trample underfoot a hyacinth on the mountainside, and on the ground the purple flower. | |
| The stars about the lovely moon hide their shining forms when it lights up the earth at its fullest. | |
| Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow. | |
| Sweet mother, I cannot ply the loom, vanquished by desire for a youth through the work of soft Aphrodite. | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| "Sappho" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Sappho" is used about 3 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (proper) | 100% | 3 | 202,518 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
sappho | 120 |
sappho lesbos | 13 |
sappho poem | 10 |
sappho poetry | 10 |
sappho picture | 4 |
biography sappho | 3 |
greek sappho | 3 |
innovation project sappho | 3 |
early sappho | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "Sappho"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Greek | σαπφώ, σαπφούσ. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | apphosay.(various references) | |
Spanish | safo. (various references) | |
Swedish | sapfo. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Words rhyming with "Sappho" (pronounced 'Sap"pho'): morpho. (additional references) |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-h-o-p-p-s" | |
-1 letter: opahs. | |
-2 letters: haps, hasp, hops, opah, paps, pash, pops, posh, shop, soap, soph. | |
-3 letters: ash, asp, hao, hap, has, hop, ohs, ops, pah, pap, pas, poh, pop, sap, sha, sop, spa. | |
-4 letters: ah, as, ha, ho, oh, op, os, pa, sh, so. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-h-o-p-p-s" | |
+2 letters: pansophy, pawnshop, prophase. | |
+3 letters: amphipods, apophyges, apophyses, apophysis, copperahs, haplopias, hippocras, hypopneas, pawnshops, phosphate, photomaps, photopias, polyphase, prophages, prophases, prophasic. | |
+4 letters: apophonies, apophyseal, apostrophe, approaches, diplophase, epiphanous, gypsophila, haplotypes, hyperopias, hypoplasia, pansophies, pastorship, phalaropes, phosphates, phosphatic, photophase, photoplays, polygraphs, polyphasic, poppyheads, porphyrias, psychopath, saprophyte, typographs. | |
+5 letters: amphiploids, apophthegms, apostleship, apostrophes, apostrophic, carpophores, cephalopods, copperheads, diphosphate, diplophases, fleahoppers, grasshopper, gypsophilas, hippocampus, hippocrases, hypophyseal, hypophysial, hypoplasias, hypoplastic, hypospadias, leafhoppers, pantographs, pastorships, pedophilias, phonographs, phosphatase, phosphatide, phosphatize, photographs, photophases, pictographs, polyphagias, polyphagies, polyphagous, praetorship, prophylaxes, prophylaxis, psychograph, psychopaths, psychopathy, saprophytes, saprophytic, spheroplast, tryptophans. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)53 61 70 70 68 6F |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)... .- .--. .--. .... --- |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010011 01100001 01110000 01110000 01101000 01101111 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)S a p p h o |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0053 0061 0070 0070 0068 006F |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)536782827481 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Quotations: Familiar 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Rhymes 11. Anagrams 12. Orthography | 13. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
