scandal

plural scandals

1. countableuncountableAn 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.

   4 more examples

   O, what a scandal is it to our crown, That two such noble peers as ye should jar!

   1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]

   It would not be fair to record the adventures of Father Brown, without admitting that he was once involved in a grave scandal.

   1933 November, G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton, “The Scandal of Father Brown”, in The Scandal of Father Brown, London; Toronto, Ont.: Cassell and Company, published 1935, →OCLC, page 1

   Well, yes, a couple of leaks are all very well, but it takes more than that... A big scandal perhaps. A political scandal. Or a scandal about something people really understand: Sex... or money.

   1990, House of Cards, season 1, episode 1

   But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud, and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts.

   2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion

2. countableuncountableDamage to one's reputation.

   The incident brought considerable scandal to his family.

   1 more example

   Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability:[…].

   1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC

3. countableuncountableWidespread moral outrage, indignation, as over an offence to decency.

   When their behaviour was made public it caused a great scandal.

4. countableuncountablelifestyleA word or deed, lacking in rectitude in some manner, which is an occasion of the spiritual ruin of another.
5. countableuncountableDefamatory talk; gossip, slander.

   According to village scandal, they weren't even married.

   1 more example

   Scandal at Barchester affirmed that had it not been for the beauty of his daughter, Mr. Harding would have remained a minor canon; but here probably Scandal lied, as she so often does; for even as a minor canon no one had been more popular among his reverend brethren in the close, than Mr. Harding; and Scandal, before she had reprobated Mr. Harding for being made precentor by his friend the bishop, had loudly blamed the bishop for having so long omitted to do something for his friend Mr. Harding.

   1855, Anthony Trollope, “chapter 1”, in The Warden

6. Philippinescolloquialcountableuncountableamateur or homemade pornography
7. Philippinescolloquialcountableinformaluncountablecommotion.

present singular third person scandals · US participle present scandaling · UK participle present scandalling · US participle past scandaled · US past scandaled · UK participle past scandalled · UK past scandalled

1. obsoleteTo defame; to slander.

   I do fawn on men and hug them hard And after scandal them.

   1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]

   Synonyms: denigrate, diss, traduce, assassinate, asperse, backbite, badmouth, befoul

2. obsoleteTo scandalize; to offend.

   A propensity to scandal may partly proceed from an inability to distinguish the proper objects of censure

   1855, Robert Potts, Liber Cantabrigiensis

   Synonyms: affront, insult, misbid, abuse, affront, burn, carry, cut down

1. abbreviationacronymevolutionbiologyAcronym of speciated by cancer development animals.

plural SCANDALs

1. abbreviationellipsisevolutionbiologyEllipsis of SCANDAL taxon (“a species or taxon which speciated due to the SCANDAL process”).
2. abbreviationellipsisevolutionbiologyEllipsis of SCANDAL process (“the mechanism for speciation through cancer cells becoming independent of the originating creature, and living on”).