What happened to ‘lesbians’?

The elegant, serpentine word ‘lesbian’ had a place in the sun only briefly. In the first real novel about lesbianism, 1928’s The Well Of Loneliness, the protagonists are gloomily and somewhat puzzlingly called ‘inverts’, conjuring up an image of some sad Sapphic wondering why she was condemned to spend her life upside-down.

Amazingly, Christopher Hawtree, writing in the Telegraph in 2008, noted that the word ‘lesbian’ did not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1976:

During the four decades it took to create the 12-volume Oxford English Dictionary, completed in 1928, Lesbian appeared only in reference to the island. During preparations for its 1933 Supplement, one lexicographer averred: “Lesbianism is no doubt a very disagreeable thing, but the word is in regular use, & no serious Supplement to our work should omit it.” Omitted it was, though. Readers were left with Sapphism – which the Lancet in 1901 likened to morphiomania (opium craving).