whipping boy

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