scapegoat
n
1 a person made to bear the blame for others
2 (Old Testament) a goat used in the ritual of Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16); it was symbolically laden with the sins of the Israelites and sent into the wilderness to be destroyed
vb
3 tr to make a scapegoat of
(C16: from escape + goat, coined by William Tyndale to translate Biblical Hebrew azazel (probably) goat for Azazel, mistakenly thought to mean ``goat that escapes'')