Meaning
Someone made to carry the blame for the mistakes or wrongdoing of others; by extension, to 'scapegoat' a person is to punish or publicly fault them in place of, or far out of proportion to, the real culprits. The word began as a label for a real goat in an ancient Jewish atonement ritual, and dictionaries still list that biblical sense alongside the everyday one. Neutral in register but implies injustice; strongest where blame has been deliberately shifted. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The word was coined by the Bible translator William Tyndale in 1530. Rendering the obscure Hebrew azazel of Leviticus 16, and following the Latin Vulgate's caper emissarius ('goat sent away'), Tyndale read the Hebrew as 'the goat that departs' and coined a compound of scape, a form of 'escape', plus goat: the beast on which the high priest symbolically laid the people's sins before it was sent into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement. Some scholars argue instead that azazel is the proper name of a demon or similar being, which would make the rite's second goat one sent 'for Azazel'; the dispute is unresolved. The transferred sense of a human blame-bearer is recorded by 1824, and the verb by 1884.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a scapegoat for
- be made the scapegoat
- make a scapegoat of someone
- scapegoating
Usage Examples
- When the merger failed, the junior analyst was made a scapegoat for decisions taken well above her pay grade.
- The report warned against turning one trader into a scapegoat for systemic failures.
- Coaches are easy scapegoats when a season collapses, but the recruitment policy was the real problem.