Today, a scapegoat is a person or group made to bear blame for someone else’s mistakes. The English word reaches back to the Bible: its earliest reliably documented use is in William Tyndale’s 1530 translation of the Pentateuch. Tyndale is generally credited with introducing it, though early spellings varied, and the word reflects his English rendering of a much older ritual—not a term he invented for the general practice of shifting blame.
Leviticus describes a ceremony for the Day of Atonement involving two goats. The high priest cast lots to choose one for the Lord and one “for the scape goat.” The first was sacrificed as a sin offering. Over the other, the priest confessed the community’s wrongs, symbolically placing them on the animal, which was then sent alive into the wilderness. The ritual gave physical form to the removal of sin from the community.
A familiar oversimplification is that both goats were killed, or that the goat sent away was simply another sacrifice. In the biblical account, it was driven off alive. There is also uncertainty behind the passage: the Hebrew word or name Azazel, associated with the second goat, has been interpreted in different ways, and its exact meaning is disputed. Tyndale’s English word names the goat’s role in his translation; it does not settle what Azazel meant in Hebrew.
From this religious image, “scapegoat” broadened into a metaphor for anyone made to take the blame. The shift captures a powerful pattern: a person may be punished or publicly blamed not because they caused a problem, but because others want to disown it. “After the project failed, the newest employee became the scapegoat, even though the whole team had approved the plan.” “The report warned that blaming one department would make it a convenient scapegoat rather than fix the company’s underlying problems.” The phrase endures because it gives a memorable name to the unfair habit of making one person carry a burden that belongs to many.