the one who got away, or, the 'escape' goat.

Googling for a 'positive' replacement term for 'scapegoat', came across this from Wikipedia:

The word "scapegoat" is a mistranslation of the word Azazel (In Hebrew: עזאזל).

The Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament, had incorrectly translated Azazel as ez ozel – literally, "the goat that departs" – and translated the word as tragos apopompaios, meaning "goat sent out". The error was further promulgated in the Latin Vulgate, which rendered the word as caper emissarius, or "emissary goat". William Tyndale rendered the Latin as "(e)scape goat" in his 1530 Bible. This translation was later appropriated in the King James Version of the Bible (Leviticus chapter 16) in 1611.[2]

Leaving off that ONE letter is kind of a big deal. I'd *much* rather be the 'escape goat', or, "the one who got away."

Bueno. :-)

Also, from the same Wiki article (bolds mine):

The "scapegoat mechanism" in philosophical anthropology

Literary critic and philosopher Kenneth Burke first coined and described the expression "scapegoat mechanism" in his books Permanence and Change (1935), and A Grammar of Motives (1945). These works influenced some philosophical anthropologists, such as Ernest Becker and Rene Girard.

Girard developed the concept much more extensively as an interpretation of human culture. In Girard's view,

it is humankind, not God, who has the problem with violence.

Humans are driven by desire for that which another has or wants (mimetic desire).

This causes a triangulation of desire and results in conflict between the desiring parties. This mimetic contagion increases to a point where society is at risk; it is at this point that the scapegoat mechanism[10] is triggered.

This is the point where one person is singled out as the cause of the trouble and is expelled or killed by the group. This person is the scapegoat. Social order is restored as people are contented that they have solved the cause of their problems by removing the scapegoated individual, and the cycle begins again.

The keyword here is "content", scapegoating serves as a psychological relief for a group of people.