Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A man whose wife is unfaithful.
  • transitive verb To make a cuckold of.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To dishonor by adultery: said of a wife or her paramour.
  • noun A corrupt form of cockle.
  • noun A man whose wife is false to him; the husband of an adulteress.
  • noun A book-name of the cow-bird, Molothrus ater; so called from its parasitic and polygamous habits.
  • noun A name of the cow-fish, Ostracion quadricore: apparently so called from its horns. See cow-fish .

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A man whose wife is unfaithful; the husband of an adulteress.
  • noun A West Indian plectognath fish (Ostracion triqueter).
  • noun The cowfish.
  • transitive verb To make a cuckold of, as a husband, by seducing his wife, or by her becoming an adulteress.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A man married to an unfaithful wife, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.
  • verb transitive To make a cuckold of someone by being unfaithful, or by seducing his wife.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb be sexually unfaithful to one's partner in marriage
  • noun a man whose wife committed adultery

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English cokewald, from Anglo-Norman *cucuald, from cucu, the cuckoo, from Vulgar Latin *cuccūlus, from Latin cucūlus.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Er. Wierdnet's no. 2 definition might worry some otherwise complacent men out there.

    June 14, 2008

  • 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.

    June 14, 2008

  • 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?

    June 14, 2008

  • Cornuto (/cornuta) works both ways in Italian.

    June 14, 2008