Workplace Buzz: Today’s Headlines

Workplace Buzz on November 16, 2007 7:08 AM

Disparaging Language or Slang?
Call a woman the b-word, and most likely she's offended. Or does it depend who's using that little word that rhymes with witch? "Today" show anchor Meredith Vieira recently greeted her former co-hosts on "The View" with, "So how are you crazy bitches?" But the term has been used to insult women since the 1400s and, since the 1500s, sometimes men, too, said John Baugh, a linguist at Washington University in St. Louis. The word was "the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman, even more provoking than that of whore," according to the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Seattle Times

Vacation-Interrupted Insurance
I JUST booked a brief vacation, to a warm place, now that the weather is finally turning cold and the holidays loom. I clicked through all the usual disclaimers on the travel Web site — the hotel is nonrefundable; changes to flights can be made only with a hefty fee. Then I turned my attention to trip-cancellation insurance, and something new appeared. Would I care to buy added insurance, I was asked, that allows me to cancel my trip if I have to work? New York Times

A Polyglot Society
Foreign language courses are booming on American college campuses, a new study finds, with enrollment in Arabic more than doubling from 2002 to 2006. Enrollments in languages such as Russian and Arabic have traditionally spiked with world events, but Karin Ryding of the MLA and a professor of Arabic at Georgetown said she thinks these increases will stick. "Young people today understand that the world is truly and inevitably smaller, and they're coming to the study of Arabic with serious, professional goals in mind," she said. Yahoo! News

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