On May 17, 1973, televised hearings regarding the Watergate scandal began in the United States Senate. Sen. Sam Ervin chaired.
Little did participants know that the name of the hotel in which the White House-arranged break-ins occurred would provide a template for most future political scandals: “-gate” would be suffixed to nearly every other possible designator of scandal. The current Democratic vendetta against Republican Donald Trump for winning the 2016 election has been called “Russiagate,” for example.
This could be called a suffix meme. Or insufferable meme, if you prefer.