whipping boy

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Blaming & accusing
accusatory
accuse someone of a crime
accuse someone of something
accuser
accusingly
alleged
arraign
blame
blame game
contributory negligence
haul
have someone to thank (for something)idiom
impeachment
imputation
incriminating
incrimination
nail
opprobrium
recrimination
stitch

scapegoat | American Dictionary

scapegoat
noun[ C ]
us/ˈskeɪpˌɡoʊt/
someone who is blamed or punished for another’s faults or actions:
When things don’t go well, people always look for a scapegoat.

scapegoat | Business English

scapegoat
noun[ C ]
uk /ˈskeɪpɡəʊt/us
a person or thing that is blamed for something bad that someone else has done:
Politicians have used the financial sector as a scapegoat for the global economic crisis.
scapegoat
verb[ T ]
uk /ˈskeɪpɡəʊt/us
to blame a person or thing for something bad that someone else has done:
They scapegoated environmental laws as the problem of the economy, instead of looking for real problems.

Examples of scapegoat

scapegoat
In both cases, certain victims, heroes, enemies and scapegoats were at the heart of the interpretation.
No matter how perceptions of the environment are parsed, scapegoat theory receives precious little support from these data.
We must acknowledge at the outset that our test of scapegoat theory is incomplete.
One implication of this sort of 'diversion' is that potential scapegoats might employ strategic behaviour to avoid becoming a diversionary target.
To make sense of the crisis, the authorities looked for scapegoats.
It is at this point that anxious and threatened citizens often identify a scapegoat for societal problems.
Because monsters are always the constitutive outside of normativity, the scapegoats constructed of society's devouring anxieties, they can never safely be tucked away.
Political entrepreneurs seek political capital by mobilizing support for repressive and punitive actions against scapegoats.
The offering of feigned opposition can give moderates a welcome scapegoat and pretext for moderation.
Finding a scapegoat when times go bad is often a task of utmost importance, for political leaders and ordinary citizens alike.
With these scapegoats destroyed, the community itself is cleansed, ensuring that normality will return without further suffering.
Proverbially, the "king" is both tyrant and scapegoat.
It may be that rate sometimes serves as a general scapegoat for perceived comprehension difficulties, whether it is the direct cause or not.
For instance, so-called mixed families are often automatically considered as dysfunctional and may become scapegoats at the societal level.
Though the authors occasionally question the wisdom of diplomats, they do not make them the scapegoats for failed peace settlements.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.