The use of the suffix "gate" to indicate a scandal

MajorMaccas

MajorMaccas

MajorMaccas

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Why?? Anyone else irritated by this?

For the ill-informed, it refers to the scandal of the Watergate Hotel, which lead to the downfall of Nixon's administration. There's plenty on wikipedia about the scandal, so I won't regurgitate it here.

My point is, every single scandal in the tabloids is now using "gate" as a suffix, despite being ridiculously trivial and is essentially someone "busting chops" and catching someone else out in a lie.

/grumble off :rolleyes:
 
There certainly are, but how are we meant to tell them apart when "Volcanogate" is revealed that the icelandic government triggered the volcano on purpose, but then simultaneously, "Jordangate" occurs, where the kids aren't really hers or something else no one cares about...
 
It irritates me slightly, it's another adopted Americanism. The example of "Terrygate" springs to mind, used in the press to refer to a certain Chelsea defender's escapades.
 
Yep, drives me nuts as well, just like the climategate thing doing the rounds. Trying to make a small issue into a massive scandal instead.

It's usually used with a load of intelectual words to hide the truth that there is very little actual data about the issue... :p
 
Annoys me too.

It tends to be the reporters on the BBC that do this all the time - but what do you expect when they promote people from Newsround and the others are/want to be TV 'celebrities' Like Fiona Bruce and Kate Silverton.

God help them if there was ever a scandal in Gateshead..... their heads would probably implode.
 
We had a soupgate incident at work once. A colleagues soup went missing/was stolen and investigations (of a light hearted nature) ensued. Turned out that the soup was wrongly classified as a "hazard" and was removed.

But yeah, I'm not too fond of the use of gate after issues in the news etc.
 
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