Donglegate
Donglegate proper noun: a controversy of 2013 in which a woman at a technology conference took offense on overhearing an apparently ribald joke involving the word dongle and published the two men's photographs on the Internet in an attempt to shame them, causing one to be fired from his job.
Proper noun
Donglegate
- A controversy of 2013 in which a woman at a technology conference took offense on overhearing an apparently ribald joke involving the word dongle and published the two men's photographs on the Internet in an attempt to shame them, causing one to be fired from his job.
- The interaction, now referred to as “Donglegate,” resulted in one of the males being fired by his company. Richards herself became the target of hate, threats, and a denial-of-service attack on her website.2014, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, Gender & Pop Culture: A Text-Reader, page 182
- With Donglegate she pointlessly robbed that man of his employment. She degraded his masculinity. And so the community responded by degrading her femininity.2015, Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed
Origin of Donglegate
From dongle + -gate.
Questions about Donglegate
- What does Donglegate mean?
- Donglegate means a controversy of 2013 in which a woman at a technology conference took offense on overhearing an apparently ribald joke involving the word dongle and published the two men's photographs on the Internet in an attempt to shame them, causing one to be fired from his job.
- What part of speech is Donglegate?
- Donglegate is a proper noun.
Words near Donglegate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Donglegate (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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Cite this entry: “Donglegate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/donglegate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.