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scapegoat
in a sentence

show 59 more with this conextual meaning
  • The large meatpacking companies say that they've become a convenient scapegoat for ranchers, when the real problem is low poultry prices.†   (source)
  • Like the scapegoat of the Bible, place society's ills on them, then "stone them" in absolution.†   (source)
  • He would catalog what he called "the geography of blame" and the scapegoat role assigned to Haiti.†   (source)
  • And she's always been a group scapegoat.†   (source)
  • 'People need a scapegoat,' he said.†   (source)
  • If the attempt at rescue failed and more children were sacrificed than were saved, scapegoats had been set up to absorb the blame.†   (source)
  • This didn't satisfy many people, and a second scapegoat soon emerged: the firefighters.†   (source)
  • As long as we have politicians and leaders and media people who feast on people's fears, we'll continue making scapegoats.†   (source)
  • A parent's grief needed a scapegoat, and parents were occasionally moved to violence, to exacting retribution on those who'd tried to help.†   (source)
  • But a scapegoat is certainly required.†   (source)
  • He doesn't admit to a thing, and he has Niedermann as a scapegoat.†   (source)
  • They'll have a sharp eye for scapegoats.'†   (source)
  • If the poison was his doing …. well, he will need a scapegoat.†   (source)
  • His tantalizing words "I'm just a patsy" hung in the air, suggesting that he was some sort of scapegoat.†   (source)
  • Then they just made him the scapegoat, didn't they?†   (source)
  • He's my forever scapegoat, really.†   (source)
  • He was the scapegoat, his death to take the place of another's.†   (source)
  • Martin didn't know it, but Deacon was setting him up to be a scapegoat.†   (source)
  • No. But if it makes you feel better to think that I am one, you are welcome to use me as your scapegoat.†   (source)
  • " No sir, that boy says, "Must've been some spark set that fire, Pa!" and then they go looking for you, the neighborhood scapegoat.†   (source)
  • ESTRAGON: The Scapegoat's Agony.†   (source)
  • They had lived in peace, a haven for Will's sharp scapegoat pain, looking on from a distance at Millie's resounding destructions.†   (source)
  • They had me and they had their scapegoat; and worst of all, they had Belle.†   (source)
  • Mavis comes in, wrong time, wrong place, and the killer sees a tailor-made scapegoat .†   (source)
  • We are the billy goats and nanny goats and kids—all the scapegoats to appease this blindness.†   (source)
  • But they remained potential scapegoats, available when needed.†   (source)
  • Niedermann is the scapegoat, and I guarantee that no-one will ever find him.†   (source)
  • Are you looking for the truth or just a scapegoat?†   (source)
  • A scapegoat who just happened to be near and dear to the primary's heart.†   (source)
  • The least of my fears was that I had volunteered to be one of the scapegoats if we met failure.†   (source)
  • The men involved were willing to assume the role of scapegoats.†   (source)
  • Murphy claimed that he had battled the company for years over safety issues and that Monfort had unfairly made him the scapegoat for its own illegal behavior.†   (source)
  • You need a scapegoat.†   (source)
  • He had the feeling that Brother Leon was that kind of character, that he would need a scapegoat and Brian would be closest at hand.†   (source)
  • The Rwandan genocide was a carefully planned case of scapegoating, launched by a government of the majority against a powerless minority.†   (source)
  • Sure enough the season had been almost as tribulated as the one before, and there was a tendency to look for scapegoats.†   (source)
  • If he held the train, they would make him the scapegoat to appease the anger of Mr. Chalmers; if he sent the train through and it did not reach the western portal of the tunnel, they would put the blame on his incompetence; they would claim that he had acted against their orders, in either case.†   (source)
  • The press hasn't understood it, the scientists at Duke University haven't understood it, David Congress hasn't understood it-although his The Shadow Exploded is probably the only half-decent book written on the subject-and certainly the White Commission which used me as a handy scapegoat, did not understand it.†   (source)
  • Was Judas, too, a scapegoat?†   (source)
  • They are not like poets—scapegoats; they are not chained to the rock.†   (source)
  • But it is usually a sort of melodramatic or mythical hatred directed against imaginary scapegoats.†   (source)
  • But she was not to find a scapegoat so easily.†   (source)
  • There was always one unfortunate whom the teacher singled out and used for a scapegoat.†   (source)
  • And suddenly I saw the eyes of the little squirt-face newspaperman at the cemetery gate on me, and all the eyes that had looked at me that way, and suddenly I knew that I had tried to make Duffy into a scapegoat for me and to set myself off from Duffy, and my million-dollar meal of heroism backfired that yellow taste into my gullet and I felt caught and tangled and mired and stuck like an ox in a bog and a cat in flypaper.†   (source)
  • If she arrived a minute after, she worried because that made her the logical scapegoat of the boss if he happened to be in a bad mood that day.†   (source)
  • This was his scapegoat; but his excitement was caused by something quite different.†   (source)
  • The latest addition to your collection of scapegoats, eh?†   (source)
  • Exemplary wives will sometimes find scapegoats in this way.†   (source)
  • Thus was He thrown year after year, and were others thrown—little images of Ganpati, baskets of tenday corn, tiny tazias after Mohurram—scapegoats, husks, emblems of passage; a passage not easy, not now, not here, not to be apprehended except when it is unattainable: the God to be thrown was an emblem of that.†   (source)
  • Mr. Phillips's brief reforming energy was over; he didn't want the bother of punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something to save his word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it in Anne, who had dropped into her seat, gasping for breath, with a forgotten lily wreath hanging askew over one ear and giving her a particularly rakish and disheveled appearance.†   (source)
  • Look the unseen bade him, the voice which now communicated with him who was the greatest of mankind, Septimus, lately taken from life to death, the Lord who had come to renew society, who lay like a coverlet, a snow blanket smitten only by the sun, for ever unwasted, suffering for ever, the scapegoat, the eternal sufferer, but he did not want it, he moaned, putting from him with a wave of his hand that eternal suffering, that eternal loneliness.†   (source)
  • She couldn't see why Mrs. Touchett should make a scapegoat of a woman who had really done no harm, who had only done good in the wrong way.†   (source)
  • On entering the drawing room Stepan Arkadyevitch apologized, explaining that he had been detained by that prince, who was always the scapegoat for all his absences and unpunctualities, and in one moment he had made all the guests acquainted with each other, and, bringing together Alexey Alexandrovitch and Sergey Koznishev, started them on a discussion of the Russification of Poland, into which they immediately plunged with Pestsov.†   (source)
  • Well, they've chosen their scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism and so life was made possible.†   (source)
  • I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child — though equally dependent and friendless — Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.†   (source)
  • Why should Gimpy be the scapegoat?†   (source)
  • I am being made a scapegoat of.†   (source)
  • Methinks that thou and thine abettor soon Will rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out.†   (source)
  • And he convinced us all; so lots were cast, And I, unlucky scapegoat, drew the prize.†   (source)
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