whipping boy
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.35 in modern English
27
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
2
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A boy who was whipped in the stead of a misbehaving prince in early modern Europe.
Example Sentences
- "As the whipping boy, he must take the whippings for the royal heir, Prince Brat."
- "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."
- "In others he denounces it as rank Judaism, the Jew having at that time become for him the whipping boy for all modern humanity."
Etymology
First recorded in 1647. It is debated if this type of proxy punishment actually existed, or how widespread it was.