Wiktionary

cuckold

English

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Ca. 1815 French satire on cuckoldry, which shows both men and women wearing horns.

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English cokolde, cokewold, cockewold, kukwald, kukeweld, from Old French cucuault; a compound of cucu (“cuckoo”) (some varieties of the cuckoo bird lay their eggs in another’s nest) and Old French -auld. Cucu is either a directly derived onomatopoeic derivative of the cuckoo's call, or from Latin cucūlus. Latin cucūlus is a compound of onomatopoeic cucu (compare Late Latin cucus) and the diminutive suffix -ulus.

Old French -auld is from Frankish *-wald (similar suffixes are used in some personal names within other Germanic languages as well; compare English Harold, for instance), a suffixal use of Frankish *wald (“wielder, ruler, leader”), from Proto-Germanic *waldaz (compare German Gewalt, from the related *waldą (“power, might”)), from *waldaną (“to rule”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂welh₁- (“to be strong; to rule”).

Appears in Middle English in noun form circa 1250 as cokewald. First known use of the verb form is 1589.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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cuckold (plural cuckolds)

  1. A man married to an unfaithful wife, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:cuckold
    Coordinate terms: cuckquean; see also Thesaurus:cuckquean
    • 1546, François Rabelais, The Third Book, Chapter 36
      If I never marry, I shall never be a cuckold.
    • 1994, An Anthology of Russian Women’s Writing, 1777-1992, page 183:
      You see, it happened that two lieutenantesses were fighting, because their husbands had made cuckolds of them ...
    • 2001, Goran V. Stanivukovic, Ovid and the Renaissance Body, page 178:
      In the early English drama, no play better approximates Ovid's contemptuous portrait of the willing cuckold than does Thomas Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheapside (ca. 1612).
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:cuckold.
  2. A man who is paraphilically attracted to or aroused by the sexual infidelity of a partner.
  3. A West Indian plectognath fish, Rhinesomus triqueter.
  4. The scrawled cowfish, Acanthostracion quadricornis and allied species.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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Verb

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cuckold (third-person singular simple present cuckolds, present participle cuckolding, simple past and past participle cuckolded)

  1. (transitive) To make a cuckold or cuckquean of someone by being unfaithful, or by seducing their partner or spouse.
    Synonyms: cuck, horn, hornify, put horns on; see also Thesaurus:cuckoldize
    • 1992, Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, revised edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 88:
      Most of the twelve Caesars were rumored to have been licentious as both adulterers and homosexuals (not that the two were mutually exclusive, as will be seen), and Gaius and Nero were both supposed to have been adulterers, active homosexuals, and pathics. According to Suetonius, Julius Caesar was cuckolded by Clodius (Iul. 6, 74) but was himself so noted an adulterer that Pompey (lul. 50) called him "Aegisthus" (mock epic again); and his foreign affairs were the talk of Rome and of the army (Iul, 49–52).
    • 2008, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content 1319: The Flimsiest of Logic‎[1]:
      Hey, I would never cuckold one of my friends. That’s way not cool.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Further reading

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