Briefingate

name

name ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Synonym of Debategate. US, historical

    "As the President now knows, it is not midsummer media madness, or "much ado about nothing." Briefingate - the penetration of the Carter campaign by the Reagan campaign, in order to give the Republican candidate an edge in 1980's televised debate - raises a legitimate issue of right and wrong."

Synonyms

All synonyms
debategate

Example

More examples

"As the President now knows, it is not midsummer media madness, or "much ado about nothing." Briefingate - the penetration of the Carter campaign by the Reagan campaign, in order to give the Republican candidate an edge in 1980's televised debate - raises a legitimate issue of right and wrong."

Etymology

From briefing + -gate. Coined by American journalist and presidential speechwriter William Safire in 1983 (see quotation below).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.