cuckold
Syllables: cuck·old/ˈkʌ.kəʊld/US/ˈkʌ.koʊld/
cuckold noun: a man married to an adulterous spouse, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.
Noun
cuckold (plural cuckolds)
- A man married to an adulterous spouse, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.
- If I never marry, I shall never be a cuckold.1546, François Rabelais, The Third Book, Chapter 36
- You see, it happened that two lieutenantesses were fighting, because their husbands had made cuckolds of them ...1994, An Anthology of Russian Women’s Writing, 1777-1992, page 183
- A man who is attracted to or aroused by the sexual infidelity of a partner.
- A West Indian plectognath fish, Rhinesomus triqueter.
- Synonyms:
- Ostracion triqueter, smooth trunkfish
- The scrawled cowfish, Acanthostracion quadricornis and allied species.
- Synonym of fringed filefish.
- Synonyms:
- fringed filefish
Verb
cuckold (third-person singular simple present cuckolds, present participle cuckolding, simple past and past participle cuckolded)
- To make a cuckold or cuckquean of someone by committing adultery, or by seducing their partner or spouse.
- "Gave her anything she wanted - her own car, her own bank account, a free leg to amuse herself as she pleased. Of course she hated him for it. Cuckolded him, too, naturally."1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 173
- 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...1992, Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, revised edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 88
- Synonyms:
- cuck, horn, hornify, put horns on, behorn, cuckoldize, two-time
cuckold meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Arabic and Vietnamese
cuckold in Tamil
- விபச்சாரம் செய்யும் மனைவியையுடையவன், ஒழுக்கம் கெட்டவளின் கணவன், ஒருவகை மீன் இனம்
cuckold in Urdu
- a cuckold, wittol
- دیوث dayyūs
cuckold in Arabic
- man married to an adulterous spouse
- دَيُّوث dayyūṯ
cuckold in Vietnamese
- make a cuckold
- cắm sừng
Examples of cuckold in a sentence
- 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).2001, Goran V. Stanivukovic, Ovid and the Renaissance Body, page 178:
- Nothing captured the alt-right mentality better than cuckservative, with its taunt that moderation is unmanly and certain conservative males are cuckolds.2017 December 22, Dominic Green, “Are You Sufficiently Woke?”, in The Weekly Standard, Washington, retrieved 10 Feb 2022:
- Hey, I would never cuckold one of my friends.2008, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content 1319: The Flimsiest of Logic:
Synonyms of cuckold
- Ostracion triqueter
- smooth trunkfish
- fringed filefish
- cuck
- horn
- hornify
- put horns on
- behorn
- cuckoldize
- two-time
6 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of cuckold
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cuckolds |
| alternative form (obsolete) | cuckhold |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cuckolds |
| present participle | cuckolding |
| past participle | cuckolded |
| past | cuckolded |
Origin of cuckold
From Middle English cokolde, cokewold, cockewold, kukwald, kukeweld, from Old French cucuault; a compound of cucu (“cuckoo”) and Old French -auld. The word references the behavior of cuckoo birds where they lay their eggs in another bird’s nest. 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.
Words formed from cuckold
Questions about cuckold
- What does cuckold mean?
- Cuckold means a man married to an adulterous spouse, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.
- What is cuckold in Tamil?
- Cuckold in Tamil is விபச்சாரம் செய்யும் மனைவியையுடையவன், ஒழுக்கம் கெட்டவளின் கணவன், ஒருவகை மீன் இனம். See Cuckold meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use cuckold in a sentence?
- 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).
- What part of speech is cuckold?
- Cuckold can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce cuckold?
- Cuckold is pronounced /ˈkʌ.kəʊld/ (UK).
- What is the plural of cuckold?
- The plural of cuckold is cuckolds.
Words near cuckold in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cuckold (page history and authors); cuckold (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); دیوث (Urdu) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cuckold.wav.
Cite this entry: “cuckold.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cuckold. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.