英语词汇whipping boy的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

whipping boy. Because royalty was considered sacred, or possibly because he was born frail and sickly, the son of En- gland’s Henry VIII, the young prince who became King Edward VI when only nine years old, had a whipping boy to take all his punishments for him. Barnaby Fitzpatrick, a sturdy lad, was flogged every time Edward deserved chastisement, whether it be for botching his Greek lessons or insulting an archbishop. Despite this early form of national health insurance, Edward died of consumption in 1553 at the age of 16, the commoner Fitzpatrick surviving all his floggings and living to a compara- tively old age. Anyway, the practice of princelings employing commoner whipping boys wasn’t unusual in Europe four or five centuries ago; Fitzpatrick is only England’s first recorded one. When the common practice ceased in more democratic times, it left us with the expression whipping boy for a scape- goat, someone punished for mistakes committed by another— especially an official or worker punished for the wrongs of his superior.

词汇	whipping boy
词源	whipping boy. Because royalty was considered sacred, or possibly because he was born frail and sickly, the son of En- gland’s Henry VIII, the young prince who became King Edward VI when only nine years old, had a whipping boy to take all his punishments for him. Barnaby Fitzpatrick, a sturdy lad, was flogged every time Edward deserved chastisement, whether it be for botching his Greek lessons or insulting an archbishop. Despite this early form of national health insurance, Edward died of consumption in 1553 at the age of 16, the commoner Fitzpatrick surviving all his floggings and living to a compara- tively old age. Anyway, the practice of princelings employing commoner whipping boys wasn’t unusual in Europe four or five centuries ago; Fitzpatrick is only England’s first recorded one. When the common practice ceased in more democratic times, it left us with the expression whipping boy for a scape- goat, someone punished for mistakes committed by another— especially an official or worker punished for the wrongs of his superior.
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