A variant term, often used instead of "were", usually considered a more "formal" or "proper" way of describing ourselves. It comes from the greek roots "therian" which means beast or animal, and "anthropos" which means a man or human being.
While "were" is a more recognizable term to mean a person with an animal side/spirit/nature, it carries connotations that some people feel are negative or misleading, and the term "therianthrope" was suggested as a more proper term.
Sometimes, therianthropy is shortened, in speaking or writing, to "therian", because it's easier to say.
The terms are, generally, more or less interchangeable in the community.
Therio means beast and thrope (from anthropos) means man (as in humankind, indicating either male or female). A therianthrope is a shifter. It is another generic term for all sorts of WereSomethings
?. Some shifters use the word theriomorph and prefer it. However therianthrope, and it's cousin term lycanthrope (literally "Wolf Man") are commonly used by the psychiatric world as terms for crazy people who think they are animals or who think they can turn into animals. Therefore it has a taint of the unacceptable about it for people who consider their beliefs perhaps eccentric, but not crazy. So many shifters don't use it to refer to themselves, but some do. It's a matter of how one personally feels about the word. However, "Spiritual Therianthropy" has become a common term in the shifter subculture, and it's meaning is like a spiritual version of therianthropy rather than the physical version that most people think of as a real werewolf.
Therianthropy covers all animal forms, including wolves, so a
lycanthrope can be considered a
therianthrope. However, since lycanthropy specifically deals with wolves, therianthropes are generally thought of as people who transform themselves into other animal forms. Therianthropes include weretigers, werefoxes, werebears, etc.