Word Confusion: Gait versus Gate

Plural for the noun: gaits
Gerund: gaiting

Third person present verb: gaits
Past tense or past participle: gaited
Present participle: gaiting

Plural for the noun: gates
Gerund: gating

Third person present verb: gates
Past tense or past participle: gated
Present participle: gating

Paces of an animal

Verb, intransitive:
Walk with a particular gait ²

Verb, transitive:
[Animals] Walking in a trained sequence of foot movements ²

• An exposed affair of corruption, venality, etc.

Indicating a person or thing that has been the cause of, or is associated with, a public scandal

Noun:
Hinged barrier used to close an opening in a wall, fence, or hedge ²

Number of people who pay to enter a sports facility, exhibition hall, etc., for any one event

Device resembling a gate in structure or function

An electric circuit with an output that depends on the combination of several inputs

[Skiing] Opening through which a skier must pass in a slalom course

[Archaic] Way, path ³

[North England and Scotland] Habitual manner or way of acting

[Dialect] Method, style

[Dialect] The channels by which molten metal is poured into a mould ⁴

[Dialect] The metal that solidifies in such channels

Suffix:
[-gate] Attached to any word to indicate “scandal involving” ¹

Verb, intransitive:
[Metallurgy] To make or use a gate ²

Verb, transitive:
[British, be gated] Confine a student to school or college ²

[Electronics] To control the operation of an electronic device by means of a gate

To select the parts of a wave signal that are within a certain range of amplitude or within certain time intervals.

He has the easy gait of an athlete.

He walks with a slow stiff gait.

Verb, intransitive:
While your dog must be aware of you, he should not look at you while he gaits.

He gaits unsteadily.

Have a friend watch your horse gaiting to watch his conformation.

Verb, transitive:
The dogs are gaiting in a circle.

Watch it! Those smaller crocodiles gait in bounds.

Prince gaits in a two-beat gait when he trots.

In 1976, Koreagate was a political scandal involving South Korean political figures seeking influence from 10 Democratic members of Congress.

Chinagate resulted in federal prosecutions of foreign influence peddlers who had been trying to buy a night at the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House.

Radical Rightists and the not-so-Reverend Jerry Falwell received illegal funds in Moongate.

Noun:
Just open the gate!

What’s the gate on today’s event?

She was so mad, she gave him the gate.

They’ve been lettin’ people go at the factory, and Pete was one of those who got the gate.

There are “various forms of electrolyte-containing dielectrics that are employed as a gate-insulating medium” (Park).

Suffix:
“Camillagate was a scandal which broke in the British tabloids in 1992, when a transcript of an explicit telephone conversation between Charles, Prince of Wales, and his mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, was published” (McMahon).

The New Orleans Saints bounty scandal, formally known as “Bountygate”, involved payouts for players on the New Orleans Saints team to injure opposing team players.

Reagan’s second term was gravely weakened by the Iran-Contra affair, sometimes known as Irangate.

Verb, intransitive:
It’s gating at 40 m/sec.

Moore’s Law can be extended by gating with multi-gate transistors.

Those new effects of a trench isolated transistor gate using side-wall gates.

Verb, transitive:
He was gated for the rest of term.

They’re gating the ion channel.

Gate those drum mikes and get rid of that ambient noise.

1. Its first known use was in 1509.

   Late Middle English gait, gate meaning gate, way

2. Its first known use was around 1900.

1. 1972, -gate was extracted from Watergate, nonce word, created as a result of a journalistic coinage to name major scandals.
2. Its first known use was before the 12th century.

   Middle English from the Old English geat and akin to the Old Norse gat meaning opening.

3. Its first known use was in the 13th century.

   Middle English, from the Old Norse gata meaning road and akin to the Old High German gazza meaning road

4. It’s probably related to the Old English gyte meaning a pouring out, from geotan meaning to pour.