As promised last week after ‘Crashgate’ - why are scandals, conspiracies and cover-ups still given the '-gate’ suffix more than 50 years after Watergate?

Whilst I think I did a reasonable job of summarising Watergate in under 200 words and highlighting the interesting curiosity that it was one of Nixon’s own former speech writers William Safire that popularised the attachment of ‘-gate’ to other political scandals during the two years of the Watergate investigation. I don’t think I really nailed why it has persisted all this time, including crossing oceans to all of the English-speaking world and beyond with -gate suffixed scandals found in other languages and countries too. But I’m not really sure anyone knows why. Maybe your students will have an idea.

-Bill