Many people translate “black sheep” literally as “kambing hitam” to mean fall guy. The black sheep (of the family) is actually the least favoured child, while a fall guy is a person who always takes the blame for a crime, normally for a fee, even though he is actually not the person who committed the crime. Then there is “scapegoat” which is the same as fall guy.
Someone on the radio recently used the word “childlike” to mean “behaving like a bad child”. The actual meaning is the exact opposite and when one describes a person as childlike, he is referring to the good attributes of a child such as honesty, naïvety (in the positive sense) and purity. For a negative description, the correct term is “childish” which means foolish; immature or trivial; or weak or silly.
(extracted from The Star)
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