the.com/scandal
a private sin that got famous, dressed up as public concern
means A publicly exposed wrongdoing or impropriety that provokes widespread outrage, gossip, and moral indignation.
from From Greek 'skandalon,' a trap or snare — specifically the springing stick that triggered a deadfall. In the Greek of the New Testament it took on a moral sense: a stumbling block, something set in your path to make you fall into sin. Latin borrowed it as 'scandalum,' and Old French softened it to 'scandle' before it reached English. So a scandal was originally the thing that tripped you up morally — only later did it shift to mean the public uproar over someone else's stumble. The same root also gives us 'slander,' a closely tangled cousin.
- word origin
- Greek skandalon meant a trap's trigger stick
- watergate suffix
- a hotel name became the suffix -gate for every scandal
- economics
- tabloid sales spike measurably during major celebrity scandals
- half-life
- most political scandals fade from headlines within weeks
- streisand effect
- hiding a scandal often makes it explode bigger
watergate — us president nixon resigned in 1974 after break-in and cover-up
fifa corruption scandal — 9 fifa officials arrested in 2015 for bribery in world cup hosting
panama papers — 11.5 million leaked documents in 2016 exposing offshore tax havens
enron collapse — houston energy company accounting fraud that wiped out $74 billion in 2001