cuckold
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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cuckoldsimple
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cuckoldssimple
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have cuckoldedperfect
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has cuckoldedperfect
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am cuckoldingprogressive
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are cuckoldingprogressive
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is cuckoldingprogressive
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have been cuckoldingperfect progressive
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has been cuckoldingperfect progressive
Past
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cuckoldedsimple
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had cuckoldedperfect
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was cuckoldingprogressive
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were cuckoldingprogressive
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had been cuckoldingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of cuckold
1200–50; Middle English cukeweld, later cok ( k ) ewold, cukwold < Anglo-French *cucuald (compare Middle French cucuault ), equivalent to Old French cocu cuckoo + -ald, -alt pejorative suffix ( see ribald); apparently originally applied to an adulterer, in allusion to the cuckoo's habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests
Explanation
A cuckold is a man who has been betrayed by his wife. If your wife cuckolds you, she is cheating on you with a different man. This is an old-fashioned word you can find in many Shakespeare plays, though cuckolding is certainly older than Shakespeare and will always exist as long as there are marriages. A man can't cuckold a woman: only a wife can cuckold her husband. By sleeping with another man, she makes her husband a cuckold.
Vocabulary lists containing cuckold
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
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Twelfth Night
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Much Ado About Nothing
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
And as Martin, Whishaw is as Britishly brittle-yet-vulnerable as only he can be, the stoic, sad-eyed cuckold trying to rise above and move on from the fray.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 2, 2023
“I ordered the broiled crab cakes and they were really good,” says Chris Kipiniak with the pained gravitas of a cuckold recounting his wife’s affair.
From New York Times ● Aug. 1, 2012
And Anderson stalwarts Murray and Jason Schwartzman own their roles as, respectively, a cuckold dad and a power-mad camp counselor, but they remain on the periphery, like wandering jesters.
From Slate ● May 24, 2012
Samuel Barnett as the helpless cuckold, Vanessa Kirby as the tricked Isabella, Richard Lintern as the Mussolinesque Duke and Andrew Woodall as a sly courtier also give good, well-defined performances.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 27, 2010
O beware of my lord of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on: that cuckold lives on bliss Who, certain of his fate, love not its wronger.
From Roger Trewinion by King, Gunning
And he sang a wide range of Wagner’s fathers, cuckolds, giants and monarchs.
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2017
The author's familiar gallery of upper-class English clowns, cuckolds and bounders in the not entirely comic opera that was England between the wars.
From Time Magazine Archive
In his first movies too he made mock of his Waspy features by playing dimwits and cuckolds.
From Time Magazine Archive
Very few men, however, take their complaints to the People’s Court for fear of appearing weak or, unthinkably, as cuckolds.
From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García
In this, however, we differ; our cuckolds are laughed at as fools, which is monstrously absurd, whilst the transgressor is denominated a fine fellow, no less monstrously unjust.
From A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13 by Kerr, Robert
Forster’s marriage also brought him suffering—he was disdained by his wife and cuckolded by his friends—indeed, his marital situation may have given Goethe the basis for his 1809 novel “Elective Affinities.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
Emma Thompson is his sister and Alan Rickman her husband, besotted by his secretary; Liam Neeson is a widowed stepfather; and Colin Firth is a writer cuckolded by his own brother.
From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2016
Wheeldon was helped by his source, Shakespeare’s searing late play, which begins with Leontes, the King of Sicilia, deciding that his queen, Hermione, has cuckolded him with his best friend, Polixenes.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 15, 2016
That would be the same crazed, cuckolded Cardenio whom Don Quixote met in Chapter 23 of the novel, then helped reunite with his inamorata a hundred pages later.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2016
Hum—no, no, this is not to me—I am jilted, cozen'd, cuckolded, and so forth.—
From The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume III by Summers, Montague
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
