I’m not normally one to protest the evolution of a language. The annual banished words list by Lake Superior State University always comes across as out of touch people rattling at the cage of their own irrelevance, and raging against new words and phrases is not going to have any effect on the people who use them regularly. So it’s a rare occasion where I will come out and say that something must never be used again, but I will do so in the case of the suffix “-gate,” which is deployed to indicate that there was a scandal of some kind.
I understand why it is used, it’s short and well known, so you can get a punchy headline and everyone knows what you’re talking about. The problem is that it has quickly become quite stupid, as the rush to append it to even the most minor controversy is just making things outright silly. The inspiration for this was a headline about “GuacoGate,” which was an incredibly minor event where singer Jack White and his booking agency were annoyed that a student newspaper published his concert rider. One of the requests within was for home made guacamole, complete with a recipe, which seems a bit over the top but as the artist’s management explained, it’s a big touring crew and they really like having snacks during the setup process.
By calling it “GuacoGate” the publication in question made me realize just how ubiquitous the term is, and how it actually seems to inflate the importance of any event it is appended to. That’s because it exists due to an actual scandal of real importance, the Watergate Scandal. The attempt to spy on the Democratic National Convention ended the presidency of Richard Nixon and became a major part of American history, it’s much more important than a brief one sentence summary can possibly manage. Years later, it was tied to the sordid tale of a singer and his employees who wanted some dip.
It also muddies the waters when it comes to people in the future, as having “-gate” on every scandal that comes along can alter the meaning of the original event. Watergate had nothing to do with water, it was the name of the hotel where the incident which set off the investigation took place. However, if gate is tied to anything that is even remotely considered a scandal, even if it’s an impressively minor event, there will naturally be people who assume that “-gate” just means scandal for whatever reason. Cue every single American history teacher letting out a frustrated sigh when they must explain that Nixon was not brought down by anything involving actual water.
It is a quick way to indicate something is a scandal, so it’s naturally not going anywhere. It just makes me realize how low the bar is for something to be considered a major scandal now. A concert rider, some deflated footballs, some slightly flimsy phones, all of these have warranted a “-gate.” None of these are major, history altering scandals, most will be forgotten fairly soon, but here we have people desperate to make them appear important so they declare they are major issues worthy of your attention. Eventually people might tire of its overuse as I have, but until then I think it needs to be retired quickly and completely. Let’s not lessen the importance of history by comparing it to guacamole.
