Origins
A scandal is a trap.βββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ The word comes from Greek skandalon, which meant the trigger-stick of a snare β the device an animal touches that springs the trap shut. The image is precise and vivid: a scandal is something that catches you and brings you down.
Early Christian writers seized on skandalon as a moral metaphor. In the New Testament, it appears repeatedly as a 'stumbling block' β something that causes a person to fall into sin. Jesus warns against being a skandalon to others: causing someone else to stumble spiritually.
Late Latin borrowed the word as scandalum, and the meaning broadened. A scandalum was no longer just a spiritual trap but any cause of moral outrage. By the time it reached English through Old French in the 13th century, scandal meant a disgraceful event that provoked public anger.
French Influence
The word slander is a doublet β the same Greek word arriving by a different path. Old French esclandre, another descendant of scandalum, lost letters and shifted meaning to become 'a false and damaging statement'. One trap became public disgrace; the other became verbal attack.
The suffix -gate, attached to modern scandals since Watergate in 1972, has become English's most productive scandal-naming tool. But the original word needs no suffix. A skandalon was already complete: a hidden mechanism designed to make someone fall.