Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A man married to an unfaithful wife.
- v. To make a cuckold of.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A man whose wife is false to him; the husband of an adulteress.
- n. A book-name of the cow-bird, Molothrus ater; so called from its parasitic and polygamous habits.
- n. A name of the cow-fish, Ostracion quadricore: apparently so called from its horns. See cow-fish .
- To dishonor by adultery: said of a wife or her paramour.
- n. A corrupt form of cockle.
Wiktionary
- n. A man married to an unfaithful wife, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.
- v. transitive To make a cuckold of someone by being unfaithful, or by seducing his wife.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A man whose wife is unfaithful; the husband of an adulteress.
- n. A West Indian plectognath fish (Ostracion triqueter).
- n. The cowfish.
- v. To make a cuckold of, as a husband, by seducing his wife, or by her becoming an adulteress.
WordNet 3.0
- v. be sexually unfaithful to one's partner in marriage
- n. a man whose wife committed adultery
Etymologies
- Derived from Old French cucuault (from cucu, the Cuckoo bird, some varieties of which lay their eggs in another’s nest). Appears in Middle English in noun form circa 1250 as cokewald. First known use of the verb form is 1589. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English cokewald, from Anglo-Norman *cucuald, from cucu, the cuckoo, from Vulgar Latin *cuccūlus, from Latin cucūlus. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The term "cuckold" comes from the Middle English cokewold and refers to a cuckoo hen who lays her eggs in another's nest.”
“Someone explain to the troll that being her cuckold is not something to be boasting about.”
“Four old pudgepots avenging a cuckold is the worst kind of testosterone-laced male ego delusion masquerading as high drama that it has ever been my misfortune to suffer through.”
“The allegory of a cuckold is a man with horns, usually that of a deer.”
“Or cuckolds; for your cuckold is your most terrible tickler of lechery.”
“There will you find that you shall never be a cuckold, that is to say, your wife shall never be”
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
“She has inflicted upon him the shame of being labelled a cuckold, and thus to be 'A fixed figure for the time of scorn/To point his slow and moving finger at '.”
“He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own magpie, who from his cage calls cuckold at a venture.”
Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope
“He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own magpie, who, from his cage, calls cuckold at a venture.”
“Last to hear about his wife's indiscretions but first to be humiliated by his unfortunate title, the cuckold is the saddest”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cuckold’.
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Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 272 more...
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Book-names
"In zoology and botany, a name (other than the technical name) of an animal or plant found only in scientific treatises—that is, not in use as a vernacular name. It is often a mere adaptation of th...
serpent-eagle, wapiti, crombec, cuckold, wrasse, ruticilla, goathead, merion, jacana, guenon, magpie, wave and 124 more...
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March 2012
panache, evanescent, erogenous, vestibule, malfeasance, lacuna, blithering, incubate, breech, tabernacle, pearly, upholstery and 79 more...
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EN - rare verbs
fornicate, enfranchise, tweet, natter, fetter, devil, cork, bunker, canoe, backstroke, carom, queer and 52 more...
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What is a man?
Masculine archetypes and stereotypes, glorifications and vilifications.
This is in line with Femmesque, though narrower in its aim. I want simply the loaded nouns that denote a man's...cuckold, provider, rapist, messiah, hero, demon lover, animus, the man in the bu..., loser, mr. right, stud, bloke and 18 more...
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yoshiyahu's Words
meme, disingenuous, antebellum, hypnagogic, philtrum, transference, prototypical, janissary, tuareg, shoal, caltrop, bannister and 89 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 3063 more... -
ShuckFinn's Words
abecedarian, conflate, mondegreen, whit, truculent, downright, pugnacious, effluvium, canker, inveigle, obfuscate, melancholy and 227 more...
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words found to be generally pleasing
alabaster, mahogany, camphor, coalesce, spire, portmanteau, gadabout, palaver, dolor, dour, dun, luminesce and 610 more...
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vmarinelli's Words
canard, gumption, inexorable, insouciance, inviolable, mordant, euphonious, sawbuck, carpe diem, pay dirt, adipocere, profligate and 496 more...
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theastic's Words
cellar, stalemate, wrought, opal, tyrant, squelch, squab, linen, tartan, paisley, scope, siren and 395 more...
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Chained Bear's Favorite Words
peruvian, sparky, poop, etymological, fuck, whatnot, pulchritude, nosh, tetched, quotidian, squalid, trajectory and 388 more...
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anotherfailedattempt's Words
kakistocracy, conflagration, pollyanna, equanimity, punctillious, obstreperous, ribald, belligerent, truculent, verbose, lachrymose, onanism and 278 more...
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play words
words for a play
pert, vicissitude, melancholy, vexation, gaud, attestation, renunciation, wax, wrought, sunder, antipodes, reckoning and 236 more...
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Loaded Dice
Off the straight and narrow; less than straight arrow.
chicanery, sophistry, pilfer, rook, diddle, fleece, grift, poach, rustle, pinch, abscond, steal and 140 more...
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Let's talk about sex
A collection of words about doing the nasty.
prurient, odalisque, soubrette, gravid, lochia, xenogamy, syngamy, zygote, pintle, hexaploid, seminal, hetaera and 232 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cuckold.
Prolagus Cornuto (/cornuta) works both ways in Italian. Jun 14, 2008
asativum Isn't there a word for applying the name of a larger classification to a part, or does it only go the other way around? Jun 14, 2008
vanishedone WeirdNet seems to (mis)some kind of classification hierarchy that makes it think, since all cuckolds are husbands, a definition of 'husband' is somehow helpful. Jun 14, 2008
asativum Er. Wierdnet's no. 2 definition might worry some otherwise complacent men out there. Jun 14, 2008