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# scapegoat

«scapegoat» in Mova's school dictionary: **A person or group blamed for something bad that is not…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### 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 →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#m1)

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 →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#m2)

3) (verb) To unfairly blame someone this way. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#m3)

### 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 →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#x1)
- Don't scapegoat your sister for your mess. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#x2)
- In history, minorities were often used as scapegoats. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#x3)
- In the Bible the scapegoat carried the people's sins into the wilderness. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#x4)
- The coach became the scapegoat when the team lost. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#x5)
- Scapegoating someone is a kind of bullying. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/#x6)

### 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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/scapegoat/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.