cuckold
/ˈkʌ.koʊld/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.85 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A man married to an adulterous spouse, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.
noun
A West Indian plectognath fish, Rhinesomus triqueter.
noun
Example Sentences
- "If I never marry, I shall never be a cuckold."
- "You see, it happened that two lieutenantesses were fighting, because their husbands had made cuckolds of them ..."
- "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)."
- "Nothing captured the alt-right mentality better than cuckservative, with its taunt that moderation is unmanly and certain conservative males are cuckolds."
- ""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.""
- "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)."
Etymology
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkʌ.koʊld/
- British English: /ˈkʌ.kəʊld/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
Synonyms
fringed filefish
cuck
horn
hornify
put horns on
behorn
cuckold
cuckoldize
two-time
Ostracion triqueter
smooth trunkfish
Acteon