A history of 'brusqueness,' 1800 to the present

Is "brusque" the new "bossy"? Is "bossy" the new "lean in"? In the wake of Jill Abramson's abrupt -- some might say brusque -- firing from the top job at the New York Times, many observers of the feminist and linguistic persuasions are taking a second look at the words we use to describe female leaders. Particularly that one word -- so odd, so anachronistic -- casually dropped twice in the New Yorker's 2011 profile of Abramson, and again in the magazine's update on why she was fired.