Yuri (百合, Yuri) and shōjo-ai are jargon terms amongst fans for lesbian content, possibly sexually explicit, in anime, manga, and related fan fiction.

Much like the term otaku, yuri — although originally a Japanese loanword — has undergone significant semantic drift. The precise difference between "yuri" and "shōjo-ai" ranges from large to none, depending on the speaker and language.

Etymology

The word yuri literally means "lily", and is a relatively common Japanese feminine name, like many flower names. In 1976, Itō Bungaku, editor of Barazoku ("rose tribe"), a magazine geared primarily towards gay men, first used the term "yurizoku" ("lily tribe") in reference to female readers in the title of a column of letters called "Yurizoku no heya" (Lily tribe's room). It is unclear whether this was the first instance of this usage of the term. Not all women whose letters appeared in this short-lived column were necessarily lesbians, but some were and gradually an association developed. From this, many dōjinshi circles incorporated the name "Yuri" or "Yuriko" into yuri hentai dōjinshi. The "-zoku" or "tribe" portion of this word was subsequently dropped. Lilies are sometimes used to symbolize same-sex love in manga.

In 2005 at Yuricon in Tokyo, Itō Bungaku spoke about the creation of the term "yuri". He, and the mangaka and writers who attended as guests spoke of reclaiming the term from a primarily hentai, or pornographic, connotation to once again describing all media that represent love, desire, attraction, and intimate emotional connections between women.

Use in Japan

In Japanese, the term yuri (百合, yuri?) is typically used to mean any attraction between girls in entertainment media, whether sexual or romantic, explicit or implied. For example, 2channel's "yuri" board includes both purely sexual and purely romantic content rather than separating them. The wasei-eigo construction is "Girls Love" (ガールズラブ, gāruzu rabu?), but is often rendered as English; occasionally spelled "Girl's Love" or "Girls' Love", or abbreviated as "GL". The term shōjo-ai (少女愛, shōjo-ai?) is scarcely, if ever, used with these meanings in Japan; instead, the terms shōnen-ai and shōjo-ai tend to denote pedophilia. Ironically, the English term "girllove" has this exact meaning and userbase, although the similar wasei-eigo Girls Love avoids both. They are a form of fanspeak amongst manga fans.

Japanese lesbians generally refer to themself by the loanword "lez" (レズ, rezu) or "lesbian" (レスビアン, resubian), or by using more specific gay slang such as nabe for a butch lesbian, similar to the English dyke.

Use in North America

The American use of yuri has broadened in recent years, picking up connotations from the Japanese use, but the historical usage differed: in America, yuri has typically been used to denote only the most explicit end of the spectrum, being effectively a variety of hentai; shōjo-ai — an independently-coined term, following the pattern of its corresponding term shōnen-ai — described anything without explicit sex. The term shōnen-ai was borrowed into English before it acquired the later meaning.

On the Internet, the spelling "shoujo-ai" is sometimes used instead of "yuri" solely because the latter produces too much unrelated material in search engines; the spelling "shōjo-ai" is less used, due to the difficulties involved in entering the "ō" character on most systems.