whipping boy
nounEtymology First recorded in 1647. It is debated if this type of proxy punishment actually existed, or how widespread it was.
1
Historical 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.
Transferred sense
- 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.1899, Rudyard Kipling, “Judson and the Empire”, in Soldiers Three:
- In others he denounces it as rank Judaism, the Jew having at that time become for him the whipping boy for all modern humanity.1902 [1898], [George] Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite […] , second edition, London: Grant Richards, page 103: