Lots of scandals have "gate" on the end, like Watergate (where Richard Nixon tried to get rid of records against him but was caught and had to resign as President - I think that's the basic details). I think that's where the term comes from, because it was a very scandalous event.
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Watergate is a general term for a series of political scandals during the presidency of Richard Nixon that began with five men being arrested after breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel complex in Washington, D.C. on June 17, 1972. The scandal reached to the top levels of American government, and the attempted cover-up of the break-in ultimately led to Nixon's dramatic resignation on August 9, 1974.
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The suffix -gate derives from the Watergate scandal of the United States in the early 1970s, which resulted in the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon. The word "Watergate" is derived from the Watergate Complex, where the scandal started. On June 17, 1972, agents of the Nixon White House and the Nixon reelection campaign were arrested while breaking into the office of the Democratic National Committee, which at the time was located in the Watergate Complex (a combination of residences and offices located near the Potomac River) in Washington, D.C. Over the course of the next two years, the scandal grew from what initially appeared to be a relatively small and inconsequential event to become one of the biggest political controversies in U.S. history.
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