Chappaquiddick is a small island off the coast of Massachusetts, in the north-east of the United States. Locals often just call it Chappy. On its own, it is only a place name. In politics and in the news, though, people almost never mean the beaches. They mean one night in 1969. A senator named Ted Kennedy drove a car off a bridge there. A young woman in the car, Mary Jo Kopechne, died. He did not report the crash for many hours. The story never really left him, and it is the reason many people give for why he never tried to become president. Speakers still stretch the name: they may say a later scandal “could be his Chappaquiddick,” meaning a mistake that stains a whole career. That use is journalistic and a bit loaded, not everyday chat, and younger people outside the US may never have heard it.

查帕奎迪克島（在新聞裡多半指 1969 年泰德·甘迺迪車禍事件，不是觀光地名）