Word.ws English Dictionary

Carriegate

Carriegate proper noun: a British political scandal of 2022 around allegations that prime minister Boris Johnson, during his time as Foreign Secretary, had recommended Carrie Symonds, then his mistress, as a candidate for a high-paying job as chief of staff in the Foreign Office.

Proper noun

Carriegate

  1. (UK, archaic) A British political scandal of 2022 around allegations that prime minister Boris Johnson, during his time as Foreign Secretary, had recommended Carrie Symonds, then his mistress, as a candidate for a high-paying job as chief of staff in the Foreign Office.
    • What are we to make of the tawdry saga of what we must now, with grim inevitability, learn to call “Carriegate”? […] the headline that appeared in the first edition of last Saturday’s Times: “Johnson tried to give Carrie top Foreign Office job during affair”.2022 June 20, Sean O'Grady, “‘Carriegate’ is just another classic Johnson scandal”, in The Independent
    • The SNP spokesman usually prefers to go into fire-and-brimstone mode at the first hint of scandal – holding forth on the moral turpitude of Westminster like a sort of besuited, latter-day John Knox. Carriegate would have pricked his interest under normal circumstances.2022 June 22, Madeline Grant, “Spluttering Boris Johnson reverts to filibuster mode as PMQs get personal”, in The Telegraph, archived from the original on 22 Jun 2022

Origin of Carriegate

From Carrie + -gate.

Questions about Carriegate

What does Carriegate mean?
Carriegate means a British political scandal of 2022 around allegations that prime minister Boris Johnson, during his time as Foreign Secretary, had recommended Carrie Symonds, then his mistress, as a candidate for a high-paying job as chief of staff in the Foreign Office.
What part of speech is Carriegate?
Carriegate is a proper noun.

Words near Carriegate in the dictionary

  1. carried the world before one
  2. carried through
  3. carried up
  4. carried water for
  5. carried weight
  6. Carriegate
  7. carrier
  8. carrier bag
  9. carrier bags
  10. carrier cycle
  11. carrier cycles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Carriegate (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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