I don't like to correct people, and it isn't my job to do it here, but I hate it when the plain meaning of expressions is changed simply because the historical source of the expression has been forgotten.

Recently I was startled to hear the term "whipping boy" applied to an overworked employee whose boss was a hard-driving taskmaster.

That is not the meaning of the term "whipping boy." I don't care how abusive a boss might be (or how masochistic an employee), a whipping boy is not merely someone who is punished or abused; he must take punishment on behalf of another -- and not at the hands of that person (i.e. a scapegoat).

This is a very old concept, and a historically interesting one. Wondering whether it might be falling into misuse (like the word "decimate" -- which once meant a ten percent destruction of forces), it didn't take me long to find examples.

I realize that leftists consider Bush an oppressive tyrant, but that does not make his alleged victims his "whipping boy" -- despite the insistence of this post:

Airstrikes on Iraqi weddings so Bush can appear to have a plan? How many people have to die for Bush to get elected? Or have the Iraqi people just become Bush's whipping boy when he gets upset? For their sake we ought to hope Bush does better in tonight's debate.

I hate to dwell on this, but I'm having fun with my "whipping boy" hate fest, so here's another hideous example (this one involving the elder Bush):

In the interest in keeping the world's informational databases accurate and safe, Willie Horton was the Massachussetts-furloughed murderer who subsequently became George Bush's whipping boy during his presidential run against Dukakis.

The term "whipping boy" is historical, and it is based on real boys whose function it was to be punished in place of misbehaving princes:

It seems an odd notion to us now that a royal court would have kept a child for the purpose of beating him when the crown prince did wrong. That's just what did happen though. Whipping Boy was an established position at the English court during the Tudor and Stuart monarchies of the 15th and 16th centuries. This may not have been quite as bad as it sounds. The whipping boys weren't hapless street urchins living a life of torment, but high-born companions to the royal princes. They were educated with the princes and shared many of the privileges of royalty. The downside was that, if the prince did wrong, the whipping boy was punished. It was considered a form of punishment to the prince that someone he cared about was made to suffer.

I think I have beaten this to death, and I hope no one objects too much to my historical defensiveness. It is beneath my dignity to be a whipping boy's whipping boy.

(I'd rather catch flak for defending ovaries, although that brings to mind another troublesome expression -- and I do not mean "ovarian whipping boy" . . . )