Certain words and phrases may be familiar to devout followers of a religion, but often these terms transcend their religious origins to become a part of our collective lexicon. Such is the case with “scapegoat,” a term used to describe one that bears the blame for others. The concept is derived from an ancient Hebrew ritual, though the actual term wasn’t coined until the 16th century.
Leviticus 16 describes a Hebrew ritual that took place on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. This ceremony involved a sacrifice of two goats, one of which was sacrificed to God. The other had the sins of the Jewish people symbolically transferred to it by a high priest and was then sent into the desert or cast over a rocky cliff as a sacrifice for Azazel (the name of a spirit in some translations). This latter goat is the origin of the concept of a scapegoat.
The term “scapegoat” came from a Protestant scholar named William Tyndale. In 1530 CE, he coined the term while translating the Hebrew Bible into English. Religious scholars believe the term is derived from earlier versions that mistook the Hebrew word azāzēl (“evil spirit”) as ēz ‘ōzēl (“goat that departs”), and when the Bible was translated into Latin, it read caper emissarius (“emissary goat”). Tyndale later rendered it in English in his translation as scapegoote, meaning “goat that escapes.”
Printed historical examples show that “scapegoat” eventually dropped its inherently religious connotation and took on its modern figurative notion by 1824, and the verb “to scapegoat” is attested by 1884. Today, the word rarely, if ever, applies to actual goats and is almost always applied to humans placing blame for something gone awry.
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