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The other day was the 53rd anniversary of the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, which not only caused a lot of political uproar, it had a big linguistic legacy: the suffix -gate to mean a scandal.
Today, as part of Four Letter Word season, we have a list of -gates – royal, sporting, political, food, showbiz – it’s a non-exhaustive list because there are so many, and new ones are being spawned all the time. Content warning for all sorts of bad human behaviour.
Sorry if I didn’t include your favourite, but there are SO many, and some were really too depressing and/or confusing to talk about.
Check out upcoming events at theallusionist.org/events – and listen to Hot and Bothered podcast, I’m on not one but two new episodes AND a Patreon bonus episode, talking about the 2008 Sex and the City film. Did I imagine I had three episodes-worth of things to say about it? Never! But here we are!
MORE ON -GATES:
“A suffix that stinks of corruption.”
“The syllable of scandal.”
“Things started to go wrong when it turned out that Blobbyland wasn’t all that fun.”
“It’s hard to believe that once upon a time in 90s Britain, with its revolutionary music scene, pop culture and groundbreaking political movements, the country became, for a time, obsessed with a pink blob.”
Baked Alaska/Florida (as well as its precursor, Roasted Ice)
Who Remembers Bingate?
Winegate and more Winecrimes.
Broomgate: A Curling Scandal podcast.
Snowclones.
The Watergate Hotel’s timeline slider has a lot more going on up to 1974 than thereafter.
Before there was the Watergate Complex there was the Water Gate Inn, which seems to have been scandal-free despite serving a dish called Shrimp Wiggle Esche Puddle.
Tampongate and Toegate.
Bloodgate: “I just ran on the pitch and got on with my job. A few phases later, the physio runs on and gives me a blood capsule and I was like: ‘What the hell do I do with this?’”
“We were disappointed – not because he told the truth but because it seemed he wanted the best of both worlds: to take the money and to blab.”
“The paper seeks to argue that [Bigotgate] had a major impact on Brown’s political career as well as Labour’s image on the British political landscape.”
“Jeansgate didn’t just highlight the sport’s tension between tradition and modernity—it tore it wide open. Organizers need Magnus, but they also need rules, and this scandal proved you can’t always have both.”
Poopgate.
One of the most memorable anecdotes of Answer Me This was when Jon Ronson appeared as a guest in episode 190 and regaled us with the time he went to a different branch of Blobbyland.
Also in Answer Me This: in episode 395 we traced the surprisingly winding history of the ‘Macarena’ song and dance.
Source: Allusionist 211. Four Letter Words: -gate — The Allusionist
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