scapegoat
part of speech
noun (a scapegoat, scapegoats); verb (scapegoat, scapegoats, scapegoated, scapegoating)
meaning for a pupil
1) A person or group blamed for something bad that is not really their fault, often so others escape blame. tree →
2) (Bible) In the Old Testament (Leviticus 16), on the Day of Atonement the priest put the people's sins on a goat and sent it into the desert. tree →
3) (verb) To unfairly blame someone this way. tree →
sense in the lessons
In ethics, history and anti-bullying lessons, scapegoating is unfair: in history whole groups, such as Jews in Nazi Germany, were wrongly blamed for a country's problems. In everyday life a child can be made the scapegoat for a broken window. Phrases: «make someone a scapegoat», «used as a scapegoat».
examples
- The new boy was made the scapegoat for the broken window. tree →
- Don't scapegoat your sister for your mess. tree →
- In history, minorities were often used as scapegoats. tree →
- In the Bible the scapegoat carried the people's sins into the wilderness. tree →
- The coach became the scapegoat when the team lost. tree →
- Scapegoating someone is a kind of bullying. tree →
note
Countable: scapegoats. One word. Verb: «scapegoat», and «scapegoating» for the act. Not the same as «escape goat».
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «scapegoat» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.