Every major scandal is called “-gate” because of Watergate. Is there a word for this kind of change in language?
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.[SUP][8][/SUP] 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".[SUP][9][/SUP] 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".
The article also claims that -ghazi has become a new word like this, but I didn't hear any of the cites in the wild--- the Patriots and their football were called Deflategate, not Ballghazi, and while I remember Chris Christie's traffic jam, I don't remember it being called Bridgeghazi rather than Bridgegate.
My hypothesis would be, since people died at Benghazi, Americans are less likely to throw the word around casually and attach it to bridges or footballs, whereas political stuff like gerrymandering or Watergate scandals is fair game.
So I'd say the -ghazi isn't a suffix that's caught on, which leaves just the two.
From a Wiki article that lists various -gate scandals---
The Oxford English dictionary website refers to it as The Watergate Effect.
I thought it was called a portmanteau if you chop up bits of words and stick them together in new ways.
Not quite. In this instance, it's adding "gate" as a suffix to other words to signify something illegal or scandalous. A portmanteau is a bit different. As the term's originator, Lewis Carroll, put it (via Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass): "You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word." So portmanteau words are like smog (smoke + fog), or motel (motor + hotel), even Carroll's own chortle (chuckle + snort).
Brexit is a portmanteau of British + exit, but what's interesting is that its use has caused "exit" to be given the Watergate effect treatment as well - applied as a suffix in usages like Frexit, Swexit and Grexit.
Brexit is a portmanteau of British + exit, but what's interesting is that its use has caused "exit" to be given the Watergate effect treatment as well - applied as a suffix in usages like Frexit, Swexit and Grexit.