Donutgate

English

Etymology

From donut +‎ -gate.

Proper noun

Donutgate

1. (slang) A 2015 controversy in which American singer, songwriter, and actress Ariana Grande was seen on surveillance video in a shop licking donuts that were on display and saying “I hate Americans. I hate America. This is disgusting.”
   • 2015 July 16, Leslie Gray Streeter, “For Ariana Grande, it began in Boca”, in The Palm Beach Post, West Palm Beach, Fla., page D1:

     A family friend says “Donutgate” won’t stop Grande’s rise to the pinnacle of music stardom.

   • 2016 July 28, “Grande splits from dancer-boyfriend”, in SunStar Cebu, page B5:

     The Focus singer and [Ricky] Alvarez started dating last year after they were spotted kissing in a surveillance footage for the now-infamous “Donutgate” where the two were seen licking donuts sold in a store.

   • 2017, Danny White, Ariana: The Unauthorized Biography, London: Michael O’Mara Books, →ISBN:

     CHAPTER EIGHT / #donutgate / If she thought 2014 had been stormy, then 2015 was going to offer a whole new level of drama – and if you want a snapshot of how crazy her life can be, then consider this fact: the almighty storm was whipped up by a humble doughnut. […] Well, if you thought that some of these scandals centred on bizarre themes, then the doughnut storm, inevitably nicknamed ‘doughnut-gate’ by the media, was about to reach a whole new level of weirdness.

   • 2018, Bruce M. Rowe, Diane P. Levine, A Concise Introduction to Linguistics, 5th edition, Abingdon, Oxon, NeW York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 89:

     The suffix [-gate] has also been used for hundreds of scandals in areas other than politics. For example, in 2015 in the world of entertainment there was Donutgate; journalism had its Mediagate in 2012; for sports there was Deflategate in 2015; and for technology and business Emissionsgate occurred in 2015.

   • 2018, Brian J. O’Connor, Lori Perkins, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Watergate (But Were Afraid to Ask), New York, N.Y.: Riverdale Avenue Books, →ISBN:

     For the most ridiculous gates, you’ve got to go to the entertainment media, which brought us Donutgate, based on some random incident of singer Ariana Grande licking unpurchased donuts and stating, “I hate America. That’s disgusting.”

   • 2018 December 27, Elle Hunt, “Ariana Grande: a beacon of resilience in her worst and biggest year”, in The Guardian, page 18:

     The 2016 DNC email hack revealed that “donutgate” cost her a gig at the [Barack] Obama White House.

   • 2019 May 23, Jay Cridlin, “She wants it, she’s got it”, in Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla., page 12W:

     But she was also the kind of pop star it was fun to poke fun at, talented but artistically lightweight, adorable but not exactly lovable. Doughnutgate was the icing on the eclair.

   • 2019 December 23, Sean Santiago, “Remember When Ariana Grande Got Caught Licking Doughnuts and Yelling "I Hate America"?”, in InStyle‎^[1], archived from the original on 2019-12-27:

     #Donutgate was so perfectly random as to seem almost engineered, and we — pun intended — ate it up.

   • 2020, Stephen Jinku Hughes, “Ariana Grande—"Into You": A Song That Deserved Better”, in Salient‎^[2], page 35, column 1:

     Ariana delves into another slinky verse, seducing us with relatable quips about making “too many mistakes” and how she “better get this right” (is she alluding to her #DonutGate here? If so, we love a foreshadowing queen).

   • 2020 May 14, Richard Wolffe, “Trump’s obsession with Obama is an attempt to distract from his failures”, in The Guardian, page 14:

     His love boat has one port of call, far away from a pandemic and recession: a place they call Obamagate. […] But what, exactly, did the last president [Barack Obama] do, beyond wearing a tan suit, that could possibly earn him the dreaded suffix [-gate] applied to every scandal from Donutgate to Pastagate to multiple Piegates?

   • 2023, Dylan Hart, 1000 Weird Facts About Hollywood, →ISBN:

     In 2015, in an incident forever known as DONUTGATE, Ariana Grande was caught on camera licking some donuts in a California bakery and then putting them back on the shelf.

   • 2023, Michael Frizell, Darren G. Davis, Eric M[ichael] Esquivel, Fame: Pop Stars, TidalWave Productions, →ISBN:

     - IN A LEAKED E-MAIL STATING GRANDE WAS VETOED FROM PERFORMING AT THE DNC NATIONAL CONVENTION DUE TO “DONUTGATE.”