Meaning of whipping boy | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A boy who was whipped in the stead of a misbehaving prince in early modern Europe.
   historical
2. Someone punished for the errors of others.

Equivalents

Examples

“As the whipping boy, he must take the whippings for the royal heir, Prince Brat.”

“Once upon a time there was a little Power, the half-bankrupt wreck of a once great empire, that lost its temper with England, the whipping-boy of all the world, and behaved, as every one knows, most scandalously.”

“In others he denounces it as rank Judaism, the Jew having at that time become for him the whipping boy for all modern humanity.”

CEFR level