Head to theallusionist.org/gate to listen to this episode and find out more about some -gates
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, put freshly-baked language on the window sill to cool.
Four-letter word season continues! Previous episodes in the season include the F-swear, the C-swear, a quiz about four-letter words that aren’t swears; and today’s 4-letter word had a pretty consistent time since Old English then in living memory went in an unexpected direction.
Stuff is happening in the Zaltiverse, like upcoming live events in Vancouver with Material Girls podcast and Samin Nosrat - check theallusionist.org/events for information and tickets. The podcast Hot and Bothered had me on for two episodes (plus a Patreon bonus). Host Vanessa Zoltan and I are talking about the 2008 Sex and the City film - not a work I had ever expected to contemplate in detail, but here we are. Listen to Hot and Bothered in the pod-places. And: my other podcast Answer Me This is back, answering questions from listeners on myriad topics, such as: “When do popes learn Italian?” Listen at answermethispodcast.com and in the pod-places.
A four-letter word awaits us. On with the show.
The other day was the 53rd anniversary of an event that had a big linguistic legacy… and caused a big political uproar, and the resignation of Richard Nixon as president of the United States of America, who here knows forwhy?
“Watergate scandal.”
OK, who here knows what the Watergate Scandal actually was?
“Break-in, wiretapping, cover-up… tapes and stuff… Deep Throat, was that a thing?”
And this was called Watergate because:
“It happened at the Watergate Hotel?”
That’s right, it happened at the Watergate Hotel in the Watergate Complex in Washington DC, and the Watergate was called ‘watergate’ because -
“There are a few different reasons floating around but most likely because the site is next to where Rock Creek flows into the Potomac River where there was a watergate which is like a floodgate.”
I’ll be honest: I’ve always been a bit hazy about the particulars of the Watergate scandal. I wasn’t born yet when it happened and then after I was born nobody actually explained it, and we didn’t have internet yet and it wasn’t in the print encyclopaedias yet, there was that gap where things were too old to be news and too new to be history.
So I just gleaned what it was from entertainment and jokes and references and such. And as it recedes further into history, I think people will know even less about what it actually was - especially as now, a president can have ten bigger scandals than that before breakfast.
But what is strong and enduring is the Watergate Scandal’s linguistic legacy: the suffix ‘gate’, to mean a scandal. It still continues to be used afresh. There are so many -gates!
Which began as a deliberate ploy, actually. -Gate took off as a suffix almost immediately after the Watergate Scandal, and flourished because of the writer William Safire, who had been Richard Nixon’s speechwriter. From 1973, he had a column in the New York Times in which he coined multiple new -gates, and later he admitted that had been a deliberate move, to make the original -gate scandal Watergate seem more unserious, just one of many scandals, silly scandals, everyone’s scandaling, all the political parties are doing it.
Today we have a list of -gate scandals - a non-exhaustive list, there are absolutely loads, and more hatching all the time, these are just some! You could listen to this like a Tranquillusionist, but it’s not quite tranquil enough. Content warning for all sorts of bad behaviour.
Here we go.
Royalgates:
Camillagate AKA Tampongate - remember that? In 1989, the then Prince Charles and his longterm sidepiece Camilla Parker-Bowles - both still married to other people - were on the phone to each other, humorously expressing amorousness via the notion of him being reincarnated as a pair of her knickers or her tampon. This call was somehow being secretly recorded, and in 1993 it was leaked to the tabloids. Much outrage ensued, “Can this tampon-yearning man really become king?” the headlines screamed, conveniently forgetting that Charles’s ascension to monarch was not going to be based on merit or behaviour. Anyway, he is now king, and the bigger scandal should have been illegal phone recordings, and I think we would have all been happier for this to have stayed private.
Fergiegate, where Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, was videotaped offering a tabloid journalist access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew for £500,000. Nobody even wants that!
Kategate, from 2024: that was the doctored photo of Kate Middleton and her children’s eerily photoshopped hands.
Queuegate: TV presenters Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby supposedly skipping the many hours long queue to visit Queen Elizabeth’s coffin. You’ll notice that a lot of these -gate scandals would be hard to remember as ever having happened at all if they didn’t have a -gate name to pin them in the memory.
Sophiegate - you’re not a Royal if you don’t have your own -gate! Pretty much all the Royals got one, including Princess Diana:
Squidgygate, which erupted in 1992; this was Princess Diana’s own illegally recorded phonecall, with her friend or lover James Gilbey, who used the pet name ‘Squidgy’ or ‘Squidge’ for her, while she talked about what a terrible time she was having in the Royal Family. Was the phone-tapping a plot to oust her from the monarchy? Was it merely a money-making scheme as people dialed up a premium phoneline and paid 36p per minute to listen to the half-hour recording of the conversation? Who knows? There were investigations; MI5 and MI6 were cleared of involvement. These are problems Disney princesses never seem to face.
Toegate: the 1992 scandal that ended the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson after newspapers published photos of her having her toes kissed by her financial advisor.
Politicalgates:
Bigotgate. A few days before the UK general election in 2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was on the campaign trail, had a conversation with a woman who asked him about Eastern European immigrants, quote, “flocking” into the UK and implying they were the reason British citizens weren’t getting enough benefit payments. Afterwards, in the privacy of a car but unwittingly with his mic still on, Gordon Brown referred to her as, quote, “bigoted”. Didn’t do his election chances any favours.
Gordon Brown’s other gate, Biscuitgate, happened in 2009 when he was doing a Q&A on Mumsnet and didn’t want to have to say what his favourite biscuit was. And I wouldn’t either, because you’re inevitably going to piss off somebody, and we’ve all learned the hard way never to cross a Custard Cream fan.
Another Biscuitgate happened in Mauritius in 2017, when the Speaker of the National Assembly’s daughter had a contract to sell biscuits to state-owned organisations and - gasp - the biscuits were labelled “made in the UK” but were actually made locally in Mauritius, and the lie was breaking sanitary law. And they were being sold at a 3300% markup!
Mauritius has had quite a lot of gates: Gambling-gate, Palmargate, Varmagate, Turbine-gate, Albiongate - which involved a political activist having a party where several very young women were made to dance and undress to the song ‘Macarena’. After this, state radio was forbidden to play ‘Macarena’, which is really pointing the finger at the wrong culprit.
Dildogate, that one’s from Aotearoa New Zealand, when a protester threw what was thought to be a dildo at then-MP Steven Joyce. But it wasn’t even a dildo, it was a dog’s squeaky toy.
Emailgate - “but her emails!” Ughghghgh.
Fartgate. There are a few Fartgates in several countries and in several fields. Sometimes a politician is accused of farting in a public forum and has to make an excuse like it was a chair scraping along the floor. But the Canadian edition of Fartgate in 2016 was an argument over whether the word ‘fart’ was parliamentary.
Fridgegate, when Boris Johnson avoid being interviewed by hiding in a fridge.
Garglegate: in 2010, the then Taoiseach of Ireland Brian Cowen did a radio interview and political rivals said he sounded hungover. He claimed he was just hoarse! Nonetheless his approval ratings were down to 14% by the end of that year, and his time in office ended shortly after. The interviewer later confirmed that Cowen hadn’t been drunk, just tired, but by then it was 2017 and way too late to close the -gate.
Hairgate: that was when allegedly hundreds of flights were delayed when two runways at Los Angeles International Airport were allegedly blocked for an hour by Air Force One while Bill Clinton had a haircut. In reality, one flight was delayed for two minutes.
Maletagate or Valijagate, Spanish for Suitcasegate: in 2007, businessman Guido Antonini Wilson flew from Venezuela to Argentina, whereupon the airport police seized his suitcase. Antonini Wilson said it contained books, but actually it contained $790,550 American dollars in unmarked bills, absolutely obliterating the rules about how much cash you can take out of Venezuela in one go. Also he was close with Hugo Chavez so speculation began: was the cash for fixing Argentina’s election, was it for bribes, was it to be laundered? Inconclusive; after several years, the case closed with no allegations proven. But, the airport police officer who noticed the bricks of cash while scanning the suitcase became known as Suitcase Girl and posed for the Argentine and Venezuelan editions of Playboy.
Minkgate: in Denmark in 2020, the government decreed a cull of all the 17 million mink farmed for fur, lest they spread coronavirus. The cull order quickly turned out to have had no legal basis, and ultimately led to a snap general election.
Panamagate, which is all the political scandals that resulted from the leaking of the Panama Papers.
Partygate - when the rest of England was under COVID lockdowns and everyone was forbidden to socialise with other households, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, eventual Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and other Conservative politicians had numerous parties.
And next up, another Conservative Prime Minister party scandal:Piggate. In 2015, an unauthorised biography was published of David Cameron, who had recently resigned as the British Prime Minister. The book contained the allegation that when Cameron had been a student at Oxford University, he had put his genitals into the mouth of a dead pig. And in all the political turmoil and misery that has happened in the decade since, sometimes I do still think, “Well, at least we had Piggate. The best ever night on Twitter. Piggate really brought us together.”
Pizzagate: this was when then NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio ate a pizza - with a knife and fork! SCANDAL!!! To New Yorkers. You know where eating pizza with a knife and fork is unremarkable? ITALY.
That’s still better than the other political Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory about the Democrats running a sex trafficking ring out of a pizza restaurant.
A third Pizzagate? Yup! This time it’s David Cameron again, and then-chancellor George Osborne, and Boris Johnson, eating pizza together in 2013. “What’s so outrageous about that?” you ask indifferently, already glutted with Pizzagates. Well, the British GDP was plunging while they ate margarita pizzas that cost £22 each and had what was described by eyewitnesses as a ‘raucous’ time.
Plebgate - also known as Gategate. Finding a way for your scandal to be called ‘Gategate’ is surely the ultimate aim of the people who coin -gate scandals. This one was in Britain in 2012, when Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell was riding his bike out of Downing St, the police refused to open the big gates for him and told him to walk through the pedestrian gate, he supposedly swore at them and called them “plebs”. This led to him resigning, but also because the accusations and witness statements may have been false, seven police officers were found guilty of misconduct, and one even received a year prison sentence. However, Mitchell lost a libel case because the judge decided he was likely enough to have said ‘pleb’ or sufficiently similar. In the fight between Conservative MPs and the Met Police, there are no heroes to root for.
Slightly more well-known Bill Clinton scandal: Sexgate, AKA Zippergate, AKA Monicagate, AKA Lewinskygate, but not Billgate or Clintongate even though he was the element that made this a scandal.
Signalgate - that’s from this year, that was when the Editor in Chief of The Atlantic magazine was accidentally added to the US Government’s Signal group chat, discussing military operations.
Trousergate. In 2016, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May was pictured wearing a pair of brown leather trousers that supposedly cost £1000!
Foodgates:
Buttergate: in 2021, the scandal that Canadian butter had become more difficult to spread, it was not softening at room temperature as much as it used to. At first, the Canadian cold weather took the blame, but after a while attention shifted to farmers feeding cows too much palm fat.
Donutgate: in 2015, singer Ariana Grande was caught on camera licking donuts in a donut shop and complaining, "I hate Americans. I hate America. This is disgusting."
Horsegate, or Horsemeatgate: the 2013 scandal when it was found that across Europe, some meat being sold as beef was actually horse.
Nutellagate, when Columbia University found it was spending $5000 a week on Nutella because students were stealing so much Nutella. And the student journalist who broke that story went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. Not for the Nutellagate reporting. Maybe she could get a retroactive one.
Oniongate: in 2015, the then-Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott was videoed biting into a whole raw onion like an apple. Including the skin! Australians, explain to me why this was bad, this was surely the least worst thing he did.
Pastagate, in 2013 the government agency in Quebec that determines language matters and specifically the use of Quebec French sent a warning letter to an Italian restaurant in Montreal saying that it was breaking language laws because on the menu of this Italian restaurant there were words that were not French, like ‘pasta’.
That was Pastagate, this is Pastygate: in 2012, when the Tories were going to start charging VAT on Cornish pasties. People were livid. But! Very quickly it turned out that George Osborne couldn’t even remember ever eating a pasty. Prime Minister David Cameron said that he’d eaten one! Recently at Leeds Station! but was caught in a lie because the pasty shop had shut down two years before. So the Tories backtracked on the pasty tax. And if you’re ever feeling disheartened, I want you to remember Pastygate and say to yourself: Protest. Works.
Winegate - from 1973 so that’s how quickly Watergate turned into Winegate. The so-called ‘Nixon of Bordeaux’ had been bulk buying cheap wine, rebottling it and selling it as far more expensive types of wine. The French wine industry was rocked for years!
Sportsgates:
Anal Bead Cheat-gate: in 2022, World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen’s 53-game winning streak was broken when he lost to the lowest-ranking player in the tournament, 19-year-old Hans Niemann. Carlsen implied Niemann must have cheated, and online chess detectives spread the theory that cheating during a live chess game had to be done via instructions delivered by a supercomputer secreted in vibrating anal beads. An obvious joke, but after the 1978 chess scandal where coded instructions were ALLEGEDLY sent in the form of a blueberry-flavoured yoghurt, it didn’t seem that outlandish.
Bloodgate, the rugby scandal in England in 2009: Harlequins player Tom Williams faked a lip injury with a blood capsule, so that another player could be subbed in for him - despite cheating, the team still didn’t win the game. Then to hide the fakery, Tom Williams got the team’s doctor Wendy Chapman to cut his lip for real, which is very Death on the Nile-coded. Later, Williams said, “Logical decision making at the time, for myself and Dr Chapman, was just not there,” which is a very passive way of putting it. It turns out that fake blood capsules and bloody towels held to non-existent wounds were quite common tactics in rugby at the time - if that’s the case, if they’d had some practice, why did the fake blood look even less convincing than Halloween costume blood? Gotta get the details right, gatemakers!
Broomgate, 2015 scandal of new curling broom heads being too good.
Deflategate, the 2015 scandal in the NFL about deflated balls. I’d try to explain it, except everything NFL-related makes my head shrivel like one of the illegally deflated balls.
Fartgates, sporting versions: again, several Fartgates, several places, several sports: choose your fave, hockey players farting or darts players farting and putting off their competitors with stench?
FIFAgate, another 2015 scandal, big year for -gates, this one being bribery, fraud, tax shenanigans, racketeering and money-laundering within the football governing body FIFA.
Gamergate, a campaign of abuse and harrassment against women in gaming, and against the concepts of progress and inclusivity. Started 2014, never stopped, and in 2024 we even got Gamergate 2.0, which, like a lot of sequels and remakes, we could have done without.
Grannygate: there have been a few of these in rugby, around the UK and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Players can qualify to play for a national team if their parent or grandparent was born there, and if they weren’t… invent a fake granny.
Jeansgate: chess champ Magnus Carlsen again, in 2024 being fined $200 for breaching the chess dress code by wearing jeans to play a tournament. “Change or resign!” was the choice the World Chess Federation offered. So, Carlsen resigned. “No, wait, come back!” cried the Federation. He did. And played on, wearing jeans.
Pizzagate, yeah another one, football this time, when Arsenal player Cesc Fabregas threw pizza at Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson.
Sandpapergate: that was the 2018 scandal of Australian cricketers tampering with the ball with sandpaper.
Skategate at the 2002 Winter Olympics: was the pairs figure skating final result a fix? Was the scoring unfair? Should the silver medal-winning pair have received the gold medal and vice versa? In the end they fixed it by holding the medal ceremony for a second time and giving both pairs gold medals. The bronze-winning pair refused to attend the ceremony a second time.
Stickygate, a 2021 scandal in Major League Baseball over substances players were using to make the baseballs more sticky.
Toiletgate: another chess scandal, this one in 2006, was a player going to the toilet distractingly often? Was he cheating in there? Was he just nervous because it’s a high pressure environment? Were his vibrating anal beads causing discomfort? Had his blueberry yoghurt been off?
Entertainment and mediagates:
Bingate! From episode four of the 2014 season of The Great British Bake Off, where the contestants had to make a baked Alaska, the dessert with cake and ice cream covered in meringue and rapidly cooked - well, contestant Iain’s ice cream didn’t set, he said because contestant Diana had taken it out of the freezer to put her own ice cream in, she said she only took it out of the freezer for forty seconds which shouldn’t have made any difference - anyway, however this ice cream came to be soupy, Iain threw it into the bin, and because he didn’t present anything for the judges to taste, he got eliminated. Why is this ‘Bingate’ not ‘Baked Alaskagate’ or ‘Freezergate’? I don’t know! But it was serious enough that Diana received death threats.
Fun fact to counteract that not-fun fact: an earlier name for Baked Alaska was Alaska/Florida, because it’s partly cold and partly hot.
The next one very 1990s British culture: Blobbygate. In 1994, in the Lancashire town of Morecambe on the northwest coast of England, there opened an amusement park, The World of Crinkley Bottom, also known as Blobbyland, themed around the then-popular TV show Noel’s House Party, hosted by Noel Edmonds and set in the fictional village Crinkley Bottom, featuring the mayhem-wreaking character Mr Blobby, who was large and pink and covered in yellow spots and only said the words “Blobby blobby blobby!” THAT’s not the scandal. The scandal was that Lancaster City Council had spent £2.6m of taxpayers’ money on opening Blobbyland, and also on lawsuits that erupted when, after only thirteen weeks, Blobbyland closed down.
Dressgate - that dress that became internet-famous in 2015 as some people saw it as blue and black, others as white and gold. Oh please, let’s not fight any more: it was blue and black, the manufacturers said so and then made a one-off white and gold one to auction off for Comic Relief.
Envelopegate. When Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were on stage at the 2017 Academy Awards to present the award for best picture, opened up the envelope, announced the winner as La La Land, mid-acceptance speeches it was revealed that the winner of best picture was actually Moonlight - it’s very very awkward. And whose fault was it: Whoever handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty? The PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants who are responsible for making sure the correct Oscar winner is in the correct envelope and handed to the correct presenter? Was it the envelope itself, for being red with gold writing that was too hard to read? Or was it Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, rebooting their Bonnie and Clyde crime spree with some Oscar sabotage?
Hackgate. In 2011 the British tabloid The News of the World was shut down because since the 1990s it had been hacking the phones of thousands of people, including celebrities, footballers, the Royals, politicians, and also the families of soldiers killed in action and victims of the 7/7 bombings in London, they even hacked the phones of murdered children. And that’s what brought down the empire of Rupert Murdoch - oh wait…
Nipplegate: the 2004 Super Bowl bodice-rip that led to stricter censorship on American TV, more fines in American sports for obscene language or behaviour, tanked Janet Jackson’s career for years and had pretty much zero negative impact on Justin Timberlake - that’s the real outrage.
Poopgate, the time passengers on a Chicago architecture boat tour had 800lbs of human waste dumped on them by a Dave Matthews Band tour bus.
Sachsgate. In 2008, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross were on BBC Radio 2 amusing themselves, leaving obscene messages on the voicemail of the actor Andrew Sachs, beloved for playing Manuel in Fawlty Towers. Now, I remember this happening, and when it was broadcast, nobody paid much attention and the BBC didn’t seem fussed at all - nor did anyone else - until a full week afterwards, when the Mail reported on it. Then the BBC got tons of complaints, from audience, press and politicians; they suspended Brand and Ross, and the controller of Radio 2 resigned. There was a lot of fallout and furore. But, interesting to consider that angry response didn’t begin until the Mail pointed out there was something to which to respond angrily. I’m not saying that response was incorrect, just: why hadn’t it occurred to anyone earlier? Where was that energy when the show was being prerecorded, edited, going through the BBC’s pre-broadcast processes, and then when millions of people listened to the broadcast?
Spitgate: when people looked at a video of Harry Styles and Chris Pine at the 2022 Venice Film Festival premiere of Don’t Worry Darling and squealed, “Look! Harry Styles is spitting into Chris Pine’s hand!” Chris Pine said of course Harry Styles had not spat into his hand. It just goes to show how low the standards are for a -gate scandal and a new one is birthed over nothing, over the absence of anything happening! And from the afterlife, William Safire looked upon the rising sea of all these trivial little -gate scandals covering the original Watergate, and he smirked and said, “Mission accomplished.”
All these and so many more are the unexpected descendants of the Watergate scandal.
The Watergate complex is in the neighbourhood of DC known as Foggy Bottom, and the Watergate Complex while being built had the working title of the Foggy Bottom Project, which would have been very cool to still have, so scandals would have called ‘bottom’ instead. Partybottom. Blobbybottom. Pizzabottom. Oh, what we could have had.
Exciting news, podfans: our podcast pal The Truth is coming back - hopefully, because they need our help to do it. The Truth is one of the original and greatest fiction podcasts, movies for your ears, and actually before I listened to The Truth I was never very into fiction in audio form, but that show made me love it, and I was so sad when the show ended a couple of years ago. But Anyway, to help The Truth return, head over to their website thetruthpodcast.com and you can buy limited edition vinyl, plus T-shirts, stickers, buttons or just make a donation. And then listen to the stories; I think The Body Genius series is a great place to start, or if you want something to tickle you in the linguistics, try Danslang. That’s all at thetruthpodcast.com.
And if you want to help keep this show going, your imaginary friend The Allusionist, recommend it to somebody who might enjoy it. You telling people about podcasts you like really helps us keep afloat in the sewage tinged seas of today’s media. You can also donate to the show and in return you receive more show in the future, plus behind the scenes scoop about every episode, regular livestreams where I read relaxingly from my collection of reference books, perks at the live shows, and membership of the Allusioverse Discord Community where we hang out, share our TV and reading and food recommendations, air our thoughts and feelings, and there is of course word content too, for instance this week Allusionaut Eric Chant taught me the term ‘snowclone’ for a clichéd phrase where different components can be swapped in, like “Have snowlone, will travel.” You could count -gate as a snowclone, and/or as a libfix, a liberated suffix - yes, it’s a portmanteau! Language just keeps on delivering the fun, that’s why we’re here. Join us at theallusionist.org/donate. Oh and do let me know about -gate equivalents in different languages, like -poli in Italian.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is… going right to the back of the dictionary today…
zwitterion, noun, chemistry: an ion having separate positively and negatively charged groups.
Try using ‘zwitterion’ in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. The music by the singer and composer Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com.
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