Idiom
folk devil
Meaning
A person or type of person blamed by the public for various ills, as during a moral panic.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“The media turned the young man into a folk devil.”
“During the moral panic, the news outlets identified a local group as the folk devil responsible for all the town's problems.”
“Sociologists often observe how society constructs a folk devil to focus collective anxiety and justify harsh measures against a specific, marginalized group.”
Examples
simple
“The media turned the young man into a folk devil.”
contextual
“During the moral panic, the news outlets identified a local group as the folk devil responsible for all the town's problems.”
complex
“Sociologists often observe how society constructs a folk devil to focus collective anxiety and justify harsh measures against a specific, marginalized group.”
Key words
Related idioms
- Updated