Scapegoat

A scapegoat in its current, everyday usage is a person who is blamed or punished for the wrongdoings of others and first makes its appearance in this sense from 1823. The origin, however, is biblical and comes from the Mosaic ritual of the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:10) when two goats were chosen for sacrifice. By lot, one of the goats would be set free into the wilderness, the sins of the people having been laid upon it symbolically, while the other would be sacrificed. Scape is an old variation of escape. Thus, the goat that was set free and escapes was called the ‘scapegoat’, and the word in this sense entered the language in 1530..