Suffixgate part deux

Thanks to Bambi for the swift response - I feel that I agree with many of your points, but, much as my sense of self-preservation is screaming at me not to get involved in a debate on grammatical necessity with an English graduate, I do want to post some follow up thoughts.

I totally accept the points you make about the evolution of language being both necessary and out of our control. I'm not attempting to suggest that there is anything that can be done about be-gated words in general, but perhaps to suggest that these are words that we should try to avoid bringing into the language intentionally.

I also accept the point you make about laziness in writing. My point was not that the contraction or creation of words was lazy, but that the (journalistic) writing style that coined 'tag' terms like 'spygate' was lazy in style, because of the assumed need to simplify and condense everything for the reader.

I'd also like to suggest that there are a couple of differences between the words that you suggested were introduced similarly, and -gate words. The first is that while all of the words you suggest have general meaning (anyone in any country in any time period could be hospitalised, or use a spork), the -gate words have very specific meaning, generally referring to a single event. I can't think of an analogous concept to this one really - a set of words that describe instances rather than abstract concepts - unless you could make comparisons with people's names, which are not general concepts, but refer to specific instances (of people).

The second is that I would contest that words with the suffixes -ise or -oholic (or -aholic) are instantly understandable. They can be applied to other words in the english language, and provided you understand that word, you will understand the new word. With -gate, on the other hand, there is no frame of reference. I know what 'spy' means, but that does not help me if someone refers to 'spygate' in a conversation. Whereas, although I've never heard anyone use the word 'sproutaholic', I would know what it meant (assuming context), because it is a word describing a concept, rather than one describing an instance (of an event).

These differences, I feel, are the crux of why I take more issue with -gate suffixes than other (equally nonsensical) ones. But, my problem is less with the words themselves, but with those who create and use them without thinking about what they are doing and why.

As far as pissing on people's posts, as long as a point is well argued, it's never pissing. Plus I'm sure I have done worse to other people in the past and so probably deserved it.

N.B. Were I to use a '-gate' word on this blog any time in the future, it would, of course, be an ironic reference to this post. Ahem.