Wa‧ter‧gate /ˈwɔːtəɡeɪt $ ˈwɔːtər-, ˈwɑː-/ (also the ˈWatergate Afˌfair)
a famous political scandal in the US in the early 1970s that caused President Nixon to leave his job before Congress could impeach him (=charge him with a serious crime). It was discovered that Nixon had agreed to an attempt to obtain information about the Democratic Party’s plans for the next election by secretly going into their offices in the Watergate building in Washington D.C. Nixon later tried to prevent this information from being discovered. These recordings became known as the Watergate Tapes. Because of these events, other political scandals are often given a name ending in ‘-gate’, for example Irangate.

[TahlilGaran] Dictionary of Contemporary English ▲