List of Scandals With "-gate" Suffix - Etymology, Usage, and History of -gate

Etymology, Usage, and History of -gate

The suffix -gate derives from the Watergate scandal of the United States in the early 1970s, which resulted in the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon. The scandal was named after the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.; the complex itself was named after the "Water Gate" area where symphony orchestra concerts were staged on the Potomac River between 1935 and 1965.

The suffix is used to embellish a noun or name to suggest the existence of a far-reaching scandal, particularly in politics and government. As a CBC News Online column noted in 2001, the term may "suggest unethical behaviour and a cover-up". The same usage has spread into languages other than English; examples of -gate being used to refer to local political scandals have been reported from Argentina, Germany, Hungary, Greece and the former Yugoslavia. Such usages have been criticised by commentators as clichéd and misleading; James Stanyer comments that "revelations are given the 'gate' suffix to add a thin veil of credibility, following 'Watergate', but most bear no resemblance to the painstaking investigation of that particular piece of presidential corruption." Stanyer links the widespread use of -gate to what the sociologist John Thompson calls "scandal syndrome":

self-reproducing and self-reinforcing process, driven on by competitive and combative struggles in the media and political fields and giving rise to more and more scandals which increasingly become the focus of mediated forms of public debate, marginalizing or displacing other issues and producing on occasion a climate of political crisis which can debilitate or even paralyse a government.

The adoption of -gate to suggest the existence of a scandal was promoted by William Safire, the conservative New York Times columnist and former Nixon administration speechwriter. As early as September 1974 he wrote of "Vietgate", a proposed pardon of the Watergate criminals and Vietnam War draft dodgers. Subsequently he coined numerous -gate terms, including Billygate, Briefingate, Contragate, Deavergate, Debategate, Doublebillingsgate (of which he later said "My best was the encapsulation of a minor ... scandal as doublebillingsgate"), Frankiegate, Franklingate, Genschergate, Housegate, Iraqgate, Koreagate, Lancegate, Maggiegate, Nannygate, Raidergate, Scalpgate, Travelgate, Troopergate and Whitewatergate. The New York magazine suggested that his aim in doing so was "rehabilitating Nixon by relentlessly tarring his successors with the same rhetorical brush – diminished guilt by association." Safire himself later admitted to author Eric Alterman that, as Alterman puts it, "psychologically, he may have been seeking to minimize the relative importance of the crimes committed by his former boss with this silliness."