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whipping boy

noun

Etymology

First recorded in 1647. It is debated if this type of proxy punishment actually existed, or how widespread it was.

Definitions

  1. A boy who was whipped in the stead of a misbehaving prince in early modern Europe.

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

  2. Someone punished for the errors of others.

    • 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.

The neighborhood

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sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA