So no one dares to call this moment … Ukrainegate? Whistlegate? The possibilities lack the euphony, sparkle and accuracy of their predecessors.

We also might just be sick of the suffix.

The suffix “gate,” of course, came from the scandal that the public learned of thanks to the burglary of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate building in 1972. The name of the hotel came to stand in for the scandal itself. The “gate” was shorn from the rest of the word and came to be used as a suffix that simply meant “scandal.” Writers, most notably William Safire, drove this usage into the ground, through the ground and out the other side of the earth.

Now, even the linguists are tired of it. Brian D. Joseph , a professor of linguistics at the Ohio State University who has tracked the “gate” suffix across different languages including Greek, German and Serbo-Croatian, compared it to a pair of once-fashionable ripped jeans.

“There are so many holes you can put in a pair of jeans before they become useless,” Mr. Joseph said. “There’s an aspect like that to language use.”