(n.) A goat upon whose head were symbolically placed the sins of the people, after which he was suffered to escape into the wilderness.
(n.) Hence, a person or thing that is made to bear blame for others.
Example Sentences:
(1) It’s just not the case and wrong to scapegoat them, in my view.
(2) Pakistan has been elected as the scapegoat because the Lashkar-e-Taiba, widely believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, are based there and have been the chosen agents of the country's intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence, for creating havoc in Kashmir in the past.
(3) Alejandro Hope, a security expert and former official in the Mexican intelligence agency, suggested the detainees may be scapegoats, and that the government is genuinely in the dark.
(4) The railway staff left to pick up the pieces are being set up as scapegoats with ludicrous claims about Spanish practices and out-of-control pay, but our members have already been paying with their jobs as the privateers ditch frontline staff to maintain profits.
(5) "The eurosceptics have no solutions, just scapegoats.
(6) It is unfortunate that in recent years they have become an easy scapegoat for emissions, despite the fact that the livestock population is generally falling."
(7) He frequently used the sounds and rhythms of dubstep – which by 2011 was nearing the peak of its explosive global rise – royally enraging the scene's purists, who were already struggling to cope with "their" sound spilling into the mainstream and picked him as scapegoat.
(8) The Public and Commercial Services union, which represents one of the three Department for Transport employees facing disciplinary proceedings over the bungled procurement process, said public servants had been made scapegoats.
(9) "The average person feels they've been cast aside and made scapegoats for the failures of the financial services system.
(10) That was simplistic and failed to take into account the slum landlord problems which had facilitated Abaaoud finding shelter but, in a country seeking scapegoats, it stuck.
(11) Ministers should be working hard to win the Canning byelection rather than backgrounding against a colleague to scapegoat a potential loss,” said Sinodinos, who was the longstanding and respected chief of staff to former prime minister John Howard.
(12) It often meant no more than 'they' - the mysterious people who ruled our lives, or the scapegoats for anything that went wrong.
(13) He is finding scapegoats for the scapegoated and demands retribution for their suffering.
(14) Candy (coconut or rootbeer Lifesavers) was used as a scapegoat and given between the consumption of a meal and the administration of chemotherapy to determine whether this would lead to a greater willingness to consume items in that meal at a future test.
(15) Blackett said Nightingale's assertions that he was "a scapegoat or the victim of some wider political agenda" was "absolute nonsense".
(16) However, in order for these brothers and sisters to welcome the former scapegoat back home, they must make room for the returning member, not as a drug abuser but as a person.
(17) Bush may have gone, but the United States still makes a handy scapegoat in plenty of European capitals.
(18) This article presents Karen Blixen's concept of the family scapegoat as it was elaborated in a number of her tales.
(19) "When the big teams go out they always have to find a scapegoat, in this case the referee," wrote El Universo.
(20) Although the player has developed a thick skin, not least while he agitated for a move away from Anfield, he has been taken aback by the level of criticism that has been flung his way – particularly online – over Euro 2016 and apparently feels he has been made a scapegoat for England’s shortcomings at the tournament.
Scapegrace
Definition:
(n.) A graceless, unprincipled person; one who is wild and reckless.