scapegoat

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   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!

Simplified etymology

Scapegoat originally named the goat in Leviticus upon which the people's sins were placed before it was driven into the wilderness. Scape is a shortened form of escape, since this goat escaped ritual sacrifice. In the early 19th century the word came to mean a person blamed for the wrongdoing of others.

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.

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