Y our classmates have invited you to a midnight bash. You aren’t very keen on attending it and end up putting the blame on your mother and say, “My mom isn’t giving me permission.” You know what? You have just made your mother a scapegoat ! Your friends are going to be angry with her for no fault of hers!
When a few employees plan a prank together and then blame it on one and get him fired, the person who is blamed is the scapegoat .
Thus a scapegoat is a person who is blamed for all that goes wrong, regardless of the contributions of others.
In the Bible, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest of the ancient Jews confessed the sins of the people over the head of a goat. The goat, symbolically bearing their sins, was then let out into the wilderness. And that is how the word scapegoat originated.
