Word.ws English Dictionary

Briefingate

Briefingate proper noun: synonym of Debategate.

Proper noun

Briefingate

  1. (US, historical) Synonym of Debategate.
    • 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.1983 June 30, William Safire, “Briefingate”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 24 May 2015
    • The LaRouchians were anxious to stop the Briefingate probe, and put out a pamphlet calling it a Communist-liberal plot to undermine Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.1989, Dennis King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, New York, N.Y. […]: Doubleday, →ISBN, page 126
    Synonyms:
    Debategate

Synonyms of Briefingate

Origin of Briefingate

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

Questions about Briefingate

What does Briefingate mean?
Briefingate means synonym of Debategate.
What part of speech is Briefingate?
Briefingate is a proper noun.

Words near Briefingate in the dictionary

  1. briefies
  2. briefing
  3. briefing against
  4. briefing note
  5. briefing notes
  6. Briefingate
  7. briefings
  8. briefish
  9. briefless
  10. brieflessly
  11. brieflessness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Briefingate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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