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.