n In the Mosaic Day of Atonement ritual, a goat symbolically imbued with the sins of the people, and sent out alive into the wilderness while another was sacrificed.
n Someone punished for the error or errors of someone else.
v (transitive) To punish someone for the error or errors of someone else; to make a scapegoat of.
v (transitive) To blame something for the problems of a given society without evidence to back up the claim.