Scapegoat
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 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 someone who is punished for the errors of others wordnet
- 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!"
- 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."
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.