The overuse of -gate has become a scandal. The latest example has been George Osborne's former mate-gate. If there were ever another important political burglary in the Watergate complex in Washington it would now have to be known as Watergate-gate. That famous scandal opened a floodgate and no scandal now passes without -gate in the headline.

The ubiquity of the term raises the question of how writers ever did without it. Legend has it that Catherine the Great of Russia was involved in the planned murder of her husband that brought her to power. This event appears to have passed without anyone ever calling it Kate the Great-gate. In 1974, Richard Nixon was accused of accepting a gift of jewellery and it seems that not a single reporter ever mentioned Pearly-gate.

It is time to be more imaginative. Warren Harding's tenure as President was interrupted by the Teapot Dome scandal. Monica-teapot? Perhaps not. Watergate is in an evocative part of town: Foggy Bottom. Iran-Contra-bottom? It doesn't work, really.

But why, in any case, should the suffix be imported from America? British history has enough scandals of its own. What about -shell, the name of the crisis that toppled Asquith's Government during the Great War? Or -fumo with echoes of John Profumo and a pleasing connotation with fire? Or, indeed, the scandal of the Gunpowder Plot that gives us the suffix -fawkes?

George Orwell once said that bad writers allow the words to choose them rather than the other way round. It is too easy to add -gate and suppose that the job is done. Political events are better described in their own terms.