whipping boy

• whipping-boy

First recorded in 1647. It is debated if this type of proxy punishment actually existed, or how widespread it was.

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whipping boy (plural whipping boys)

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. (transferred sense) Someone punished for the errors of others.

   Synonyms: scapegoat; see also Thesaurus:scapegoat

   Coordinate term: whipping girl

   • 1899, Rudyard Kipling, “Judson and the Empire”, in Soldiers Three:

     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.

   • 1901, Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite‎^[1], second edition:

     In others he denounces it as rank Judaism, the Jew having at that time become for him the whipping boy for all modern humanity.