Well, the news today is still brimming with \u2018Deflategate\u2019 articles. I got to thinking about why the suffix \u2018gate\u2019 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 \u2014 all the events surrounding the incident took on the name \u201cWatergate.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2018gate\u2019 become an accepted suffix? Shortly after the scandal and resulting resignation, the news media started using words like \u201cWatergatery\u201d and \u201cwatergater\u201d to describe sketchy behavior or unscrupulous people.
\nI don\u2019t 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\u2019t seem like a good system, but ti appears to work. In 1973 the scandal-based definition of \u2018-gate\u2019 was added to the Merriam Webster dictionary.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 probably the most famous was Monicagate. I also remember his pardoning of about 140 people on his last day in office, including Patty Hearst \u2014 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\u2019s administration shut down toll lanes on the George Washington Bridge it didn\u2019t make front page news until it was dubbed \u201cBridgegate.\u201d I suppose that in today\u2019s world there\u2019s tons of headlines every day competing for our attention \u2014 use of the \u2018gate\u2019 moniker is intended to grab out attention.<\/p>\n
We used to think of gates in terms of\u00a0livestock gates, baby gates, garden gates, or even logic gates \u2014 but not anymore \u2014 when we hear \u2018gate\u2019 we almost immediately think of scandal. I\u2019m pretty sure the original word or term \u2018gate\u2019 is in no way related to scandal. Most suffixes have some grounding, like a Greek or Latin origin \u2014 as far as I can tell, not so with \u2018gate.\u2019<\/p>\n
Actually, if you think about it, since the Watergate scandal was about what occurred in the Watergate Hotel\/Complex, and not about the \u201cwater\u201d it would seem to make more sense to refer to the whole thing as \u201cWatergategate.\u201d It\u2019s funny how we mess around with our language\u2026..
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n
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Well, the news today is still brimming with \u2018Deflategate\u2019 articles. I got to thinking about why the suffix \u2018gate\u2019 has become so popular to describe just about any sort of a scandal. This all started with a 1972 political scandal … Continue reading