Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why Do Scandals End In "-gate"?

Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm sure that most of you are familiar with Watergate. You might also be familiar with Gamergate, ContraGate, Pisa Gate, Party Gate, China Gate, Deflate Gate, Sandpaper Gate, and Wine Gate. There are dozens and dozens more of these scandals which have all been named with the suffix, gate. But why do scandals get affixed with Gate in the English language? And where do the word originally come from? Learn more about scandals ending in Gate and why the suffix came to denote a scandal on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:53 It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. The path which led us from the use of the suffix gate to denote scandals, from the origin of the word water gate, is a very long and circuitous one. Believe it or not, this story actually starts in 1831 with the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio canals. Canals were a really big deal in early America because the cost of transporting goods inland was ridiculously expensive.

Starting point is 00:01:29 The canal connected Cumberland, Maryland to the nation's capital in Washington, D.C. The location, which became known as Watergate, is located not far from the eastern terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal where it emptied into the Potomac River. There are several stories about how the name Watergate came about. Most of them have to do with the location of a nearby waste weir. A waste weir is a gate that's designed to regulate water in a canal. It can remove excess water in the event of flooding or drain a canal if there was a need for repairs. Basically, it was a gate which held back water, hence water gate.

Starting point is 00:02:03 The reason why this particular location was given the term water gate primarily dates back to a 19th century inn near the site called the Watergate Inn, two words. There was also a restaurant that went by the name the Watergate Inn, which operated from 1942 to 1966. There is another theory that the word comes from the water steps, sometimes called the Watergate, which leads from the nearby Lincoln Memorial down to the Potomac River, however, the Lincoln Memorial wasn't built until the 20th century. Regardless of how the name came to be, the location became one of the most prime, undeveloped

Starting point is 00:02:35 spots of real estate in Washington, D.C. It's located just one kilometer, or a little over a half a mile, from the Lincoln Memorial in the National Mall, and it's located right next door to the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. In 1960, an Italian firm purchased the 10 acres of land, which was formerly owned by the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal for $60 million. The facility they designed was a large mixed-use complex with apartment buildings, office-based shops, and restaurants. It was pitched as a city within a city, and it would provide everything the residents would need. The first of the five Watergate buildings was open in 1963, and it quickly became one of the premier residential locations in Washington, D.C. The residents who have lived there reads like a who's who of Washington elite from both sides of the political aisle. What is relevant to this story is that the Democratic National Committee had its offices on the sixth floor of the Watergate building in the early 1970s.

Starting point is 00:03:26 The offices were broken into on June 17, 1972, by a group authorized by the President of the United States Richard Nixon. The details of the Washington break-in and the subsequent scandal surrounding it are beyond the scope of this episode. Suffice it to say, the scandal led to the only resignation of a U.S. president, and the entire affair became known as Watergate, named after the office building where the burglary occurred. And here I need to take a sidetrack from the geography and the history of the term Watergate to talk about linguistics. There are certain words in the English language called blended words or portmanteaus, which are just created by merging two other words together. A good example would be the word brunch, which is simply a combination of breakfast and lunch. There is a category of portmanteaus called libfixes. A libfix is, in and of itself, a portmanteau with the words liberated and a fix. A libfix is any sort of suffix or prefix, which can make a new word.

Starting point is 00:04:22 For example, if I said I was going to host a podathon, you'd probably know what I was talking about even if you've never heard that word before. Pod, it's clearly referencing podcasting. The suffix athon comes from the word marathon, and it's used for all sorts of things, including decathlon, walkathon, telethon, and even Toyotathon. It means anything that's extended for a period of time or lengthy. Likewise, cation from vacation has glommed on to words like staycation, workcation, and schoolcation. Even podcast is a lib fix.

Starting point is 00:04:55 The word cast comes from broadcast, which is a method of sewing seeds, which was borrowed for use in radio and television programs, and then cast became a suffix used in any sort of audiovisual program, webcasts, newscasts, podcasts, etc. So the use of the word gate as a suffix to indicate a scandal is an example of a linguistic libfix. How gate went from the Watergate scandal to general usage is a really interesting story.

Starting point is 00:05:22 The first use of gate as a suffix to indicate a scandal beyond Watergate occurred pretty quickly after the Watergate break-in became public. In August of 1972, just two months after the break-in, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, National Lampoon used the gate suffix in a non-watergate reference. The sentence in question said, quote, there have been persistent rumors in Russia of a vast scandal, implicated in the Volga Gate, or a group of liberal officials, end quote.

Starting point is 00:05:50 Just a few months later, the Saturday Review published the following, quote, inevitably the brouhaha of Bordeaux became known as Winegate, end quote. What really popularized the use of the gate suffix was the New York Times columnist William Sapphire. Sapphire was actually a member of the Nixon administration, who Nixon later targeted with wiretaps. He wrote a column for the New York Times about politics, but he also wrote another column for the Times called On Language, and he was widely considered to be one of the most foremost public authorities on the English language and grammar in the United States. Even when he wasn't writing about language and he was writing about politics, he was still considered an authority on the language. Once he started his column, he began to use the gate suffix frequently to describe various scandals and coined a whole host of Gates.

Starting point is 00:06:41 In 1974, he referred to Viet Gate, which was the idea floated at the time of pardoning draft dodgers. He coined Billy Gate, which was a scandal regarding the brother of President Jimmy Carter regarding lobbying activities. He was the one who named Contra Gate, which is also known as the Iran-Contra affair, which was the Reagan administration funneling money to Nicaraguan Contras. He named Iraq Gate, which was the allegation that the George H.W. Bush administration helped build up the Iraqi military before the Iraq War. And he also named Nanny Gate, which dealt with accusations that Nannies hired by the Clintons didn't pay their Social Security taxes. There were a whole bunch more gates that he named, including Korea Gate, Debate Gate, Briefings Gate, and Double Billing Gate. Sapphire was hardly the only one using Gate to name scandals, however. The video game industry had GamerGate.

Starting point is 00:07:29 Arianna Grande was caught licking a donut which sparked Donut Gate. Of course, there was also Deflate Gate, when the Hall of Fame cheating quarterback Tom Brady was caught letting the arrow out of balls when it was cold to make them easier to catch. The funny thing is, the use of the Gate Suffex has caught on, outside of the United States. The Australia men's cricket team was subject to sandpaper gate when one of their players was caught scuffing a ball during a match. The UK has had party gate, which dealt with parties at 10 Downing Street during the COVID lockdowns.

Starting point is 00:07:59 And Canada even had fart gate, which was when one member of parliament accused another of being unparliamentary for using the word fart during a speech. The really weird thing is that the gate suffix has even jumped into other languages. The term has been used in Argentina, Germany, South Carolina. Korea, Greece, Hungary, and even China. In China, they've used the word men for scandals, which literally means gate. So the next time you hear something in the news, which has gate attached to some scandal or controversy, just remember that it all comes from a 50-year-old political scandal named after an office building in Washington, D.C., that got its name from a water

Starting point is 00:08:37 control barrier in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Everything Everywhere Daily is an airwave Media Podcast. The associate producers are Thori Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Terran Jokes over at Podcast Republic. They write, by far my favorite podcast. It fits perfectly to my daily walk to my neighborhood cafe. The topics are varied and engaging, and I learn something new every day. Thanks, Gary. Well, thank you, Teran Jokes. Contrary to popular belief, the thing that goes best with coffee isn't donuts, it's knowledge. Remember, if you leave a review or send in a question, you too can have it read on the show. Thank you.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why Do Scandals End In "-gate"?

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