Word.ws English Dictionary

escapegoat

escapegoat is the alternative form of scapegoat.

Meaning of scapegoat

Noun

scapegoat (plural scapegoats)

  1. In the Mosaic Day of Atonement ritual, a goat symbolically imbued with the sins of the people, and sent out alive into the wilderness while another was sacrificed.
    • And Aarõ caſt lottes ouer the .ij. gootes: one lotte for the Lorde, ãd another for a ſcapegoote.1530 January 27 (Gregorian calendar), W[illiam] T[yndale], transl., [The Pentateuch] (Tyndale Bible), Malborow [Marburg], Hesse: […] Hans Luft [actually Antwerp: Johan Hoochstraten], →OCLC, Leuiticus...
  2. Someone unfairly blamed or punished for some failure.
    • He is making me a scapegoat for his own poor business decisions and the supply chain disruptions caused by the hurricane!

See all 3 meanings of scapegoat

Synonyms of escapegoat

Forms of escapegoat

pluralescapegoats

Questions about escapegoat

What is escapegoat the alternative form of?
Escapegoat is the alternative form of scapegoat.

Words near escapegoat in the dictionary

  1. escaped
  2. escapedst
  3. escapee
  4. escapees
  5. escapeful
  6. escapegoat
  7. escapegoats
  8. escapeland
  9. escapelands
  10. escapeless
  11. escapelessness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: escapegoat (page history and authors); scapegoat (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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