Learn English – ‘-gate’ as a suffix to coin words related to scandals and corruption cases

american-englishetymologysuffixesword-usage

I noticed that for corrruption/scandals the usage of '-gate' suffix is pretty common, as we have recently seen with 'datagate' and before with 'watergate'

Can anyone explain what the relation between '-gate' and scandals is and why this relation arose? Also, is this '-gate' used with the same sense in British English, too?

Best Answer

It comes from the Watergate scandal.

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