- 1水門案（1972-74 年美國尼克森總統的政治醜聞，導致他辭職）。台灣新聞界沿用的「〜門」用法就是從這裡來的，例如「電郵門」「巴拿馬文件門」，一律帶有「做壞事又掩蓋」的意思。
Watergate is the name of the biggest political scandal in modern American history, in the early 1970s. Here is the short story. In 1972, some men broke into the offices of the Democratic Party — the party against President Nixon — to look at their election plans and listen to their phones. Those offices were in a building in Washington D.C. called the Watergate. The men were caught. What made it a huge story was not really the break-in itself, but what came after: Nixon and his people tried to hide it, tried to stop the police looking, and lied about it for two years. When tape recordings from his own office proved this, Nixon knew Congress would remove him, so in 1974 he quit first. No other US president has ever quit the job.
So when someone says 'Watergate', they mean that whole affair, not the building.
The word did something unusual afterwards: the ending '-gate' broke off and became a piece you can stick on any scandal. Journalists now write things like 'Deflategate' or 'Partygate' for any story where someone did something wrong and then tried to hide it. This happens all over the world now, including in Chinese news. If you see '-gate' at the end of a strange word in a news headline, that is where it comes from, and it always suggests both and a cover-up.
One more useful thing this word teaches: from Watergate came the saying 'the cover-up is worse than the crime' — meaning the lying afterwards causes more trouble than the original bad act. That is the real lesson people take from it, and native speakers reach for it often.
Always written with a capital W. Spoken as WA-ter-gate.
組成A place name that became an event name. The building was called the Watergate after the 'Water Gate' — an area of steps by the Potomac River in Washington where concerts were held from 1935 to 1965, the audience arriving partly by boat. So the name goes: a gate at the water → a building → a scandal → a word-ending meaning 'scandal'.
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Watergatename/ˈwɑtəɹˌɡeɪt/
- 1
An American political scandal (beginning with a burglary in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC, in 1972) that eventually led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon.
Watergateverb/ˈwɑtəɹˌɡeɪt/
- 1
To treat in a manner reminiscent of the Watergate scandal.
- 2
rareTo engage in activities associated with the Watergate scandal.
watergatenoun
- 1
A gate opening onto water, or only or mainly accessible by water.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
- water gate
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。