I looked up scape ‘plant stalk’ (a word my wife and I learned at the Food Bank Farm, where they had garlic scapes), thinking it might have an interesting etymology; it didn’t particularly (it’s from Latin scapus ‘shaft, stalk’), but right below it there was a word with a really great etymology, scapegoat. I’ll quote the OED:
App[arently] invented by Tindale (1530) to express what he believed to be the literal meaning of Heb. ‘azāzel, occurring only in Lev. xvi. 8, 10, 26. (In verse 10 he renders: ‘The goote on which the lotte fell to scape’.) The same interpretation is expressed by the Vulgate caper emissarius (whence the Fr. bouc émissaire), and by Coverdale’s (1535) rendering ‘the fre goate’, but is now regarded as untenable. The word does not appear in the Revised Version of 1884, which has ‘Azazel’ (as a proper name) in the text, and ‘dismissal’ in the margin as an alternative rendering.
Merriam-Webster provides the useful information “as if ʽēz ‘ōzēl goat that departs.”
I must have known that at some point, but my memory has jettisoned enough material over the years that it came as a fresh surprise. (I occasionally “learn” things by reading over my old LH posts, sad to say.)
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