From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishscapegoatscape‧goat /ˈskeɪpɡəʊt $ -ɡoʊt/ noun [countable] BLAMEsomeone who is blamed for something bad that happens, even if it is not their faultscapegoat for She believed she had been made a scapegoat for what happened. —scapegoat verb [transitive]
Examples from the Corpus
scapegoat• Bella was just an excuse; a scapegoat.• They'll be looking for a scapegoat if things don't go their way.• The public is looking for a scapegoat, but no one will be accused until a full inquiry has been held.• The captain was just a scapegoat. The real villains were the people in charge of the shipping company.• Demagogic governments sometimes paint foreigners as scapegoats, leading to nationalization or laws restricting foreign investment.• If your company or agency anticipates failure, you and your colleagues will always be looking for scapegoats.• We are not looking for scapegoats in this case.• As for the violence in the ancestral cities, it was women who were its most quiet victims and most silent scapegoats.• I would have been the scapegoat for anything bad they wrote afterwards.• These factors must bulk larger in the explanation of depopulation than the sixteenth-century writers' scapegoat, the rapacious landlords.made ... scapegoat• Janice was to be made a scapegoat.• The Boro's second leading scorer felt he had been made a scapegoat for the home defeat by Watford.• Perhaps he simply died; but perhaps also he was made a scapegoat for his Persian policy.Origin scapegoat (1500-1600) scape (from scape “to get away” ((13-20 centuries)), from escape) + goat; meant as a translation of Hebrew 'azazel (probably the name of an evil spirit in the Bible), as if it were 'ez 'ozel “goat that leaves” 