Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use scapegoat in a sentence

15 example sentences · noun, verb

Scapegoat means 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. Example: “He is making me a scapegoat for his own poor business decisions and the supply chain disruptions caused by the hurricane!”

Examples of scapegoat by meaning

nounSomeone 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!
  • Corbett says Railtrack was under great pressure in the aftermath, as it was the scapegoat even though the signal had been working properly.2026 March 4, Christian Wolmar, “Railtrack: what really happened”, in RAIL, number 1056, page 53

verbTo unfairly blame or punish someone for some failure; to make a scapegoat of.

  • They had been used for centuries to justify or rationalize the behavior of that status and conversely to scapegoat and blame some other category of people.1975, Richard M. Harris, Adam Kendon, Mary Ritchie Key, Organization of Behavior in Face-to-face Interaction, page 66
  • And I want to add, as we make these changes, we work together to improve this system, that our intention is not scapegoating and finger-pointing.1992, George H.W. Bush, State of the Union Address
  • Then either the world or others or the self becomes the target for the human tendency to scapegoat.2004, Yvonne M. Agazarian, Systems-Centered Therapy for Groups, page 208

More sentences with scapegoat

  • They did not have an easy scapegoat, so they put it to the leader.From the entry put it to
  • This is worse than when Kate Moss was scapegoated into rehab.2025 June 13, Marina Hyde, “So social media has broken even Elon Musk. I’m forced to ask: U OK hun?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry primo
  • One ASLEF representative believed: "We have been made to a degree the scapegoat of many politicians.2023 March 22, Mike Esbester, “Staff, the public and industry will suffer”, in RAIL, number 979, page 39. From the entry hang, draw and quarter
  • He continues, "So when someone blows the whistle, the hospital has to start looking for a scapegoat.2002, Jed Mercurio, Bodies, →ISBN, page 340. From the entry lone gunman
  • "All of us feel he's being railroaded and used as a scapegoat for Nato's attack on Yugoslavia.2001 July 7, Ian Black, quoting André Tremblay, “Defenders emerge for Milosevic”, in The Guardian. From the entry railroad
  • Rather, she'd be exposed to a mixture of bluster, scapegoating, rationalization, self-servingness, face-saving, self-delusion, self-pity, and outright lie.1987, John Wheatcroft, The Beholder's Eye, page 120. From the entry self-servingness
  • This kind of drive-by scapegoating does not seem conducive to genuine reflection (and it definitely doesn't encourage reflection in the individuals it scapegoats).2012 April 11, L. V. Anderson, “Talking to Teens Who Tweeted Racist Things About The Hunger Games”, in Slate, archived from the original…. From the entry drive-by
  • The ferals are the scapegoats for the drug problems here, and are highly visible since many of them have nowhere to live.1995, Bill Metcalf, From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality: Cooperative Lifestyles in Australia, page 82. From the entry feral
  • Dionysus, once the great goat-god, turned into horned and hooved Satan, the scapegoat, who was banished (as the escape-goat) and later sacrificially burned (holocausted).1995, Janice Hocker Rushing, “Evolution of ‘The New Frontier’ in Alien and Aliens: Patriarchal Co-optation of the Feminine Archetype”, in…. From the entry holocaust
  • In other cases, particularly in Eastern European countries, old traditional antisemitic, racist and antiziganist prejudices were explicitly functionalized in order to construct scapegoats wherever and whenever needed.2015, Ruth Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, →ISBN. From the entry antiziganist

Meaning of scapegoat

  1. noun 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.
  2. noun Someone unfairly blamed or punished for some failure.
  3. verb To unfairly blame or punish someone for some failure; to make a scapegoat of.

Full definition of scapegoat

Questions about scapegoat in a sentence

How do you use scapegoat in a sentence?
Scapegoat is used as a noun and verb. For example: “He is making me a scapegoat for his own poor business decisions and the supply chain disruptions caused by the hurricane!”
What is a short sentence with scapegoat?
“This is worse than when Kate Moss was scapegoated into rehab.”
What does scapegoat mean?
Scapegoat means 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.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scapegoat (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use scapegoat in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/scapegoat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.