dog to kick
- idiom
- Informal
:
chivo expiatorio
- Whenever something goes wrong, he becomes the dog to kick in the office.
Examples
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The new manager refused to serve as the team's dog to kick.
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She warned against using interns as a convenient dog to kick when problems arise.
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He always needs a dog to kick when things go wrong.
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The manager made her team the dogs to kick after the failure.
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Whenever there is a mistake, John becomes the dog to kick for the whole team.
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The athlete was unfairly made the dog to kick by the media after his poor performance.
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In every meeting, Sarah often finds herself as the dog to kick for others' failures.
How Blamed
Surface Forms
Morphology
dog + to + kick
The phrase literally combines 'dog' and 'kick' so a learner who knows those words can infer someone who is a target for kicking — i.e., a person to take out one's anger on. However, the conventionalized meaning 'a scapegoat' or someone unfairly blamed requires pragmatic and cultural knowledge and is not fully predictable from the parts, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Dog to kick may come from the image of an angry person who kicks a nearby dog because it is an easy, safe target, with the verb kick giving a strong, physical picture. So, dog to kick now means a person chosen to take the blame or the anger, a 'scapegoat'.