Scapegoat

//ˈskeɪpˌɡoʊt// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    In the Mosaic Day of Atonement ritual, a goat symbolically imbued with the sins of the people, and sent out alive into the wilderness while another was sacrificed.

    "And Aarõ caſt lottes ouer the .ij. gootes: one lotte for the Lorde, ãd another for a ſcapegoote."

  2. 2
    someone who is punished for the errors of others wordnet
  3. 3
    Someone unfairly blamed or punished for some failure.

    "He is making me a scapegoat for his own poor business decisions and the supply chain disruptions caused by the hurricane!"

Verb
  1. 1
    To unfairly blame or punish someone for some failure; to make a scapegoat of. intransitive, transitive

    "People tend to fear and then to scapegoat ... groups which seem to them to be fundamentally different from their own."

Synonyms

All synonyms
fall guyfall guypatsywhipping boyburnt offeringcollection

Example

More examples

"Why am I the only one they complain about? They're just making an example out of me and using me as a scapegoat."

Etymology

From scape + goat; coined by English biblical scholar and translator William Tyndale, interpreting Biblical Hebrew עֲזָאזֵל (“azazél”) (Leviticus 16:8, 10, 26), from an interpretation as coming from עֵז (ez, “goat”) and אוזל (ozél, “escapes”). First attested 1530. Compare English scapegrace, scapegallows.

Related phrases

blame canadastool pigeon

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.