whipping girl
- noun
:
chivo expiatorio
- She became the whipping girl at work, always blamed for mistakes she didn't make.
Examples
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She felt like a whipping girl for her team's failures.
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Tired of being the whipping girl, she finally confronted her unfair boss.
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Far too often in history, a whipping girl has taken the fall for someone else's misdeeds.
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In the office, Jane became the whipping girl for every mistake.
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After the project's failure, the manager needed a whipping girl to take the blame for the team's mistakes.
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In the scandal, the actress became the public's whipping girl, unjustly targeted for issues beyond her control.
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He often acted as the whipping girl in the office, taking on criticism meant for the entire team.
Synonyms
65
6.3
A person blamed or punished for other people's mistakes
9
8.1
A person who is blamed or punished for other people's mistakes
How Blamed
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'whipping' (punishment) and 'girl' (a woman) allow a B1 learner to infer a person who is punished or bears blame, so the core idea is derivable from the parts. However, the specific idiomatic nuance—that she is punished or blamed on behalf of others (a scapegoat-like role) rather than literally whipped—requires contextual or cultural knowledge, so the relation is only partly predictable.
Etymology
Whipping girl may come from the old idea of a 'whipping boy' who was punished when a rich child misbehaved, so a whipping girl was a woman who took the punishment or blame for someone else. That's why today whipping girl means 'a woman who is punished or blamed for the faults or errors of others'.