whipping boy

1. 1.

   someone who is punished for the errors of others

   Synonymsscapegoat

   Broadervictim

Questions about whipping boy

What does whipping boy mean?

whipping boy means "someone who is punished for the errors of others".

What is another word for whipping boy?

Close synonyms include scapegoat. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is whipping boy a common word?

whipping boy is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.