Well, the news today is still brimming with ‘Deflategate’ articles. I got to thinking about why the suffix ‘gate’ has become so popular to describe just about any sort of a scandal. This all started with a 1972 political scandal that eventually forced Richard Nixon to resign the Presidency. Burglars, tied to the Nixon administration, were caught attempting to break in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The incident took place in a complex of buildings known as Watergate — all the events surrounding the incident took on the name “Watergate.”
So here it is more than 40 years later and the the New England Patriots and the NFL find themselves mired in something everyone is calling Deflategate. When did the use of ‘gate’ become an accepted suffix? Shortly after the scandal and resulting resignation, the news media started using words like “Watergatery” and “watergater” to describe sketchy behavior or unscrupulous people.
I don’t know if the news media is just unimaginative or not very creative, but it seems that the system they use is to take the last four letters of a previous (famous) scandal and add it on to all future scandals. Doesn’t seem like a good system, but ti appears to work. In 1973 the scandal-based definition of ‘-gate’ was added to the Merriam Webster dictionary.
I remember hearing a French scandal termed Winegage, that involved using chemicals to turn vinegar wine into table quality. President Clinton had his share of gates — probably the most famous was Monicagate. I also remember his pardoning of about 140 people on his last day in office, including Patty Hearst — that generated Pardongate. Jimmy Carter lived through Billygate when it was determined that his brother, Billy, legally represented the Libyan government as a foreign agent. A year or so ago when New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s administration shut down toll lanes on the George Washington Bridge it didn’t make front page news until it was dubbed “Bridgegate.” I suppose that in today’s world there’s tons of headlines every day competing for our attention — use of the ‘gate’ moniker is intended to grab out attention.
We used to think of gates in terms of livestock gates, baby gates, garden gates, or even logic gates — but not anymore — when we hear ‘gate’ we almost immediately think of scandal. I’m pretty sure the original word or term ‘gate’ is in no way related to scandal. Most suffixes have some grounding, like a Greek or Latin origin — as far as I can tell, not so with ‘gate.’
Actually, if you think about it, since the Watergate scandal was about what occurred in the Watergate Hotel/Complex, and not about the “water” it would seem to make more sense to refer to the whole thing as “Watergategate.” It’s funny how we mess around with our language…..
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