When a married politician who preaches family values is caught in an extramarital affair, this is an example of a scandal.
scandal
- Christian Theol. unseemly conduct of a religious person that discredits religion or causes moral lapse in another
- any act, person, or thing that offends or shocks moral feelings of the community and leads to disgrace
- a reaction of shame, disgrace, outrage, etc. caused by such an act, person, or thing
- ignominy; disgrace
- malicious gossip; defamatory or slanderous talk
Origin of scandal
altered (infl. by French scandale or LL) from Middle English scandle from Old French escandele from Ecclesiastical Late Latin scandalum, cause for stumbling, temptation from Ecclesiastical Greek skandalon, a snare: see descendtransitive verb
-·daled or -·dalled, -·dal·ing or -·dal·ling- Now Chiefly Dial. to slander
- Obs. to disgrace
scandal
noun
- A publicized incident that brings about disgrace or offends the moral sensibilities of society: a drug scandal that forced the mayor's resignation.
- A person, thing, or circumstance that causes or ought to cause disgrace or outrage: a politician whose dishonesty is a scandal; considered the housing shortage a scandal.
- Damage to reputation or character caused by public disclosure of immoral or grossly improper behavior; disgrace.
- Talk that is damaging to one's character; malicious gossip.
Origin of scandal
French scandale from Old French cause of sin from Latin scandalum trap, stumbling block, temptation from Greek skandalon ; see skand- in Indo-European roots.scandal
(plural scandals)
- An incident or event that disgraces or damages the reputation of the persons or organization involved.
- Their affair was reported as a scandal by most tabloids.
- Damage to one's reputation.
- The incident brought considerable scandal to his family.
- Widespread moral outrage, indignation, as over an offence to decency.
- When their behaviour was made public it caused a great scandal.
- (theology) Religious discredit; an act or behaviour which brings a religion into discredit.
- (theology) Something which hinders acceptance of religious ideas or behaviour; a stumbling-block or offense.
- Defamatory talk; gossip, slander.
- According to village scandal, they weren't even married.
(third-person singular simple present scandals, present participle scandalling, simple past and past participle scandalled)
- (obsolete) To treat opprobriously; to defame; to slander.
- (obsolete) To scandalize; to offend.
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster's Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
From Middle French scandale (“indignation caused by misconduct or defamatory speech"), from Ecclesiastical Latin scandalum (“that on which one trips, cause of offense", literally “stumbling block"), from Ancient Greek σκάνδαλον (skándalon, “a trap laid for an enemy, a cause of moral stumbling"), from Proto-Indo-European *skand- (“to jump"). Cognate with Latin scandÅ (“to climb"). First attested from Old Northern French escandle, but the modern word is a reborrowing. Sense evolution from "cause of stumbling, that which causes one to sin, stumbling block" to "discredit to reputation, that which brings shame, thing of disgrace" possibly due to early influence from other similar :sounding words for infamy and disgrace (compare Old English scand (“ignominity, scandal, disgraceful thing"), Old High German scanda (“ignominy, disgrace"), Gothic [script?] (skanda, “shame, disgrace")). See shand, shend.
