This is a list of scandals or controversies whose names include a -gate suffix, by analogy with the Watergate scandal, as well as other incidents to which the suffix has (often facetiously) been applied.^[1] This list also includes controversies that are widely referred to with a -gate suffix, but may be referred to by another more common name (such as the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal, known as "Bountygate"). Use of the -gate suffix has spread beyond American English to many other countries and languages.

The suffix -gate derives from the Watergate scandal of the United States in the early 1970s, which resulted in the resignation of US President Richard Nixon.^[2] The scandal was named after the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., where the burglary giving rise to the scandal took place; the complex itself was named after the "Water Gate" area where symphony orchestra concerts were staged on the Potomac River between 1935 and 1965.^[3]

The suffix has become productive as a libfix and is used to embellish a noun or name to suggest the existence of a far-reaching scandal, particularly in politics and government. As a CBC News column noted in 2001, the term may "suggest unethical behaviour and a cover-up".^[4]

Such usages have been criticized by some commentators as clichéd and misleading.^[5] James Stanyer comments that "revelations are given the 'gate' suffix to add a thin veil of credibility, following 'Watergate', but most bear no resemblance to the painstaking investigation of that particular piece of presidential corruption".^[6] Stanyer links the widespread use of -gate to what the sociologist John Thompson calls "scandal syndrome":

[A] self-reproducing and self-reinforcing process, driven on by competitive and combative struggles in the media and political fields and giving rise to more and more scandals which increasingly become the focus of mediated forms of public debate, marginalizing or displacing other issues and producing on occasion a climate of political crisis which can debilitate or even paralyse a government.^[7]

The adoption of -gate to suggest the existence of a scandal was promoted by William Safire, the conservative New York Times columnist and former Nixon administration speechwriter. As early as September 1974 he wrote of "Vietgate", a proposed pardon of the Watergate criminals and Vietnam War draft dodgers.^[9] Subsequently, he coined numerous -gate terms, including Billygate, Briefingate, Contragate, Deavergate, Debategate, Doublebillingsgate (of which he later said "My best [-gate coinage] was the encapsulation of a minor ... scandal as doublebillingsgate"), Frankiegate, Franklingate, Genschergate, Housegate, Iraqgate, Koreagate, Lancegate, Maggiegate, Nannygate, Raidergate, Scalpgate, Travelgate, Troopergate and Whitewatergate. The New York magazine suggested that his aim in doing so was "rehabilitating Nixon by relentlessly tarring his successors with the same rhetorical brush – diminished guilt by association".^[10] Safire himself later said to author Eric Alterman that he "may have been seeking to minimize the relative importance of the crimes committed by his former boss with this silliness".^[11]

The usage has spread into languages other than English; examples of -gate being used to refer to local political scandals have been reported from Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Hungary, Greece and the former Yugoslavia.^[12] The term is also used in Mandarin Chinese with the suffix -mén (simplified Chinese: 门; traditional Chinese: 門; lit. 'door', 'gate').

Some commentators have characterized this use of the -gate suffix as a snowclone.^[13] But Geoffrey Pullum, the coiner of the term snowclone, considers that it is only a "lexical word-formation analog".^[14] Martha Brockenbrough, the founder of The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, said that no one should aspire to write with cliches and that although they do help to get a lot of complicated things across in few words that they are not a good way to get people to keep reading what you're writing.^[15]

These scandals have been given the -gate suffix.

These conspiracy theories have been given the -gate suffix by both supporters and critics of them.

The suffix has also been commonly used in the context of popular media, including satirical usage by television pundits and viewers of reality shows.