To understand wrongly, taking one thing or person for another.
An error; a blunder.
A pitch which was intended to be pitched in a hard-to-hit location, but instead ends up in an easy-to-hit place.
To unfairly blame or punish someone for some failure; to make a scapegoat of.
Someone unfairly blamed or punished for some failure.
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.