Scapegoat vs Accuse - What's the difference?
scapegoat | accuse |
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.
* 1646 , Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica , Book II, ch 5
Someone punished for the error or errors of someone else.
* 1834 , Thomas Babington Macaulay, "William Pitt, Earl of Chatham" [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2332]
To punish someone for the error or errors of someone else; to make a scapegoat of.
:: Don't scapegoat me for your mistake.
* 1950 , Rachel Davis DuBois, Neighbors in Action: A Manual for Local Leaders in Intergroup Relations , p37
* 1975 , Richard M. Harris, Adam Kendon, Mary Ritchie Key, Organization of Behavior in Face-to-face Interaction , p66
* 1992 , George H.W. Bush, State of the Union Address [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5047]
* 2004 , Yvonne M. Agazarian, Systems-Centered Therapy for Groups , p208
To blame something for the problems of a given society without evidence to back up the claim.
To find fault with, to blame, to censure.
* (rfdate) (Epistle to the Romans) 2:15,
* (rfdate) ,
To charge with having committed a crime or offence.
* (rfdate) (Acts of the Apostles) 24:13,
To make an accusation against someone.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)
, title=
In transitive terms the difference between scapegoat and accuse
is that scapegoat is to blame something for the problems of a given society without evidence to back up the claim while accuse is to charge with having committed a crime or offence.scapegoat
English
(wikipedia scapegoat)Noun
(en noun)- alluding herein unto the heart of man and the precious bloud of our Saviour, who was typified by the Goat that was slain, and the scape-Goat in the Wilderness
- He is making me a scapegoat .
- The new Secretary of State had been long sick of the perfidy and levity of the First Lord of the Treasury, and began to fear that he might be made a scapegoat to save the old intriguer who, imbecile as he seemed, never wanted dexterity where danger was to be avoided.
Synonyms
* fall guy, patsy, whipping boyVerb
(en verb)- People tend to fear and then to scapegoat ... groups which seem to them to be fundamentally different from their own.
- 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.
- 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.
- Then either the world or others or the self becomes the target for the human tendency to scapegoat .
See also
* escape * stool pigeon, stoolie English calques English catachreses English terms derived from the Bibleaccuse
English
(Webster 1913)Verb
(accus)- Their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.
- We are accused of having persuaded Austria and Sardinia to lay down their arms.
- Neither can they prove the things whereof they now accuse me.
Obama goes troll-hunting, passage=According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.}}