Why this word is great
TRIBADE — [Noun] A woman who engages in sexual activity with another woman; a lesbian. From Middle French tribade, and its source, Latin tribad-, from Koine Greek τριβάς (tribás), from Ancient Greek τρίβω (tríbō, "to rub"). Unlike "lesbian" (which names an identity) or "Sapphist" (which conjures lyricism and longing), "tribade" is clinical, reductive—a term that reduces love to mechanics, intimacy to motion. It is the whisper in a 17th-century medical text, the hissed accusation in a Puritan courtroom, the dry ink of a physician’s notes labeling what he does not understand. A word that once sought to cage desire, now itself a relic, worn smooth by time.