- Historical a boy brought up together with a young prince and required to take the punishment for the latter's misdeeds
- scapegoat (sense )
whipping boy
whipping boyWebster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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"whipping boy." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 14 January 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/whipping-boy>.
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whipping boy. (n.d.). Retrieved January 14th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/whipping-boy
whipping boy
noun
- A scapegoat.
- A boy formerly raised with a prince or other young nobleman and whipped for the latter's misdeeds.
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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MLA Style
"whipping boy." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 14 January 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/whipping-boy>.
APA Style
whipping boy. (n.d.). Retrieved January 14th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/whipping-boy
Noun
(plural whipping boys)
Origin
Middle English wippen "flap violently", from Proto-Germanic wipp-, from Proto-Indo-European wib- "move quickly". Whipping boy first recorded 1647.
English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.
Link to this page
Cite this page
MLA Style
"whipping boy." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 14 January 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/whipping-boy>.
APA Style
whipping boy. (n.d.). Retrieved January 14th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/whipping-boy
