Questiongate

[ecoman]

Why have the media got this obsession of attaching the word "gate" onto news stories? Camillagate, Dianagate, cheriegate, and many many more,

[Quizmonster]

O course, it all started with 'Watergate', the name of a building in Washington. President Nixon had to resign because his henchmen carried out a robbery there against their political opponents. Since then, any such supposeed 'scandal' has had the suffix 'gate' attached to it.

[Loosehead]

So if there's ever a scandal involing Gareth Southgate then it will be known as Soutgategate!

[Quizmonster]

Oh, yes. A scandal in the north-east of England might be named 'Gatesheadgate' and a scandal involving animals in the swamplands of Florida might be 'Gatorgate'. The possibilities are endless. 

[Peter Pedant]

yeah and if Bill and Melinda every divorce publicly amd messily, it'll be Bill and Melinda Gatesgate

as you know I can flip into ponce-mode instantly. Linguists call tacking things onto words, morphemes and if you do it alot and it sounds ok, it is a strongly bound morpheme. -s is a strongly bound morpheme in English to pluralise words whereas -en is stronger in Dutch.

[Honestly people get paid money for writing this sort of c++p] So your question can be recast (in best managementspeak) into Why is -gate a strongly bound morpheme? I think it is because it has a g and t sound which is uncommon - goat and gut spring to mind but not much else - with a long vowel. - gute, geight and gart just arent English words. But that's just opinion.

NOW..... i thought your question was gonna be a MUCH more interesting  - why are some streets called gates when there isnt a gate on them?

and THAT is because up t north, the Icelandic gata - and you can spit over everyone when you're sayng this word because it is a gutteral ch as in loch - or the gh in ghayn if you speak Arabic - gata means road.

Ha! amazing what comes up on AB innit?

 

PP

[jno]

Yes, the many scandals involving Gareth Gates will be called... oh well, never mind.

The first and most famous as Quizmonster says was Watergate. (A watergate was once an entry to a building from the water - I think there's still one at the Tower of London, on the Thames.) I have been trying to remember what the second one was - ie the first to have 'gate' tacked on to it - but I can't.

[jno]

crossed with PP. Peter, surely g+t is quite common? gat (American slang for gun), gate, get, git, got, gut; Getting Gertie's Garter.

On the subject of g+t, a slice of lemon with mine.

[Quizmonster]

Quite so, PP, but surely many of the street-names ending in 'gate' are so precisely because - when, in medi�val times, most communities were fenced or walled - there generally were actual gates to north, south, east and west.

[THECORBYLOON]

If there were a scandal involving The Goodies it could be Gardengate........

[THECORBYLOON]

If there was a scandal about the hosepipe bans, that could be called WATERGATE.....hang on......

[ludwig]

The first time I can remember the use of GATE in this way (after watergate obviously) was Irangate. This was in the Reagan years when the American government was accused of selling arms to Iran in exchange for hostages and diverting the profits to the Contras, or some such weirdness.