A cuckold is a married man whose wife has sex with other men. In current usage it sometimes refers to non-married couples in committed relationships as well, although the traditional meaning is a man whose wife is adulterous.

History of the term
“Cuckold” is derived from the Old French for the Cuckoo bird, “Cocu” with the pejorative suffix -ald. The earliest written use of the Middle English derivation, “cokewold” occurs in 1250. The females of certain varieties of Cuckoo lay their eggs in other bird’s nests, freeing themselves from the need to nurture the eggs to hatching. In medieval Europe, the law, custom, and the church all defined married women as a category of property held by their husbands. Although Christian marriage vows strictly enjoined sexual exclusivity in a marriage for both partners, custom rarely enforced it on the husband (although Catholic doctrine held infidelity by either party to be a mortal sin).

A nuance of the word often overlooked in contemporary usage is that it refers to a man who, like the bird warming the cuckoo’s eggs, is unaware of his victimization. A man who knows and acquiesced, in his wife’s taking of another lover was called a “wittol,” itself a derivation from the Middle English for “willing (as in knowing) cuckold.”

Cuckolds have sometimes been written as “wearing the horns of a cuckold” or just “wearing the horns”. This refers to a tradition claiming that in villages of unknown European location, the community would gather to collectively humiliate a man whose wife gives birth to a child recognizably not his own. According to this legend, a parade was held in which the hapless husband is forced to wear antlers on his head as a symbol of his wife’s infidelity. Whether this did actually happen or not is irrelevant to the phrase, which survived.

Cuckolds are also sometimes portrayed as having horns (which look like devil horns), but this is actually a crescent moon set behind the head. Since the moon waxes and wanes, it was held as a symbol of the changeability of love, and especially the fickleness of women, so a cuckold had the moon hanging over his head.
Ca. 1815 French satire on cuckoldry, which shows both men and women wearing hornsThe French equivalent of “wearing horns” is “porter des cornes” and is used by Molière to describe someone whose husband has been unfaithful. Molière’s L’École des femmes (1662) is the story of a man who mocks cuckolds and becomes one at the end. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c.1372-77), the Miller’s Tale is a story that humorously examines the life of a cuckold.
Cultural usage
In Brazil, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spanish speaking countries and Arabic speaking countries, “horns” are a metaphor for suffering the infidelity of a partner, not limited to husbands in modern usage. However, the use of the term dates from the Roman empire, since legionaries returning from the war were given horns as a triumph or prize. So, the use of the term is a mockery of the husband, victorious in the battlefield, but defeated in his own bed. The gesture of the horned hand can be used to insult the cuckold.

The Italian equivalent is cornuto, sharing the same exact double entendre with cornuted, asserting both featuring horns and cuckolded. Its use is playful and lightheartedly derisive, with little or no particular efficacy in scorning someone during confrontations as it is lacking earnest damning credentials, potentially leading all parties to a chuckle and smothering the feud at its inception. A pervasive metaphor parodies the use of cornuto to great effect: Il bue che dà del cornuto all’asino, meaning The ox labelling the donkey cornute, equivalent to Pot calling the kettle black.

In Portuguese the terms corno (“horn”), cornudo or chifrudo (“horned”) are used to spite or mock the cheated male partner. The expression corno manso (“tame horned”) is used to indicate those men who, although cheated by their partners, come to accept it as a fact of their lives.

The Spanish word for a consenting cuckold, cabrón, has such an offensive nuance that it is a taboo word rarely used with its original meaning, “he-goat”. However, according to the tone and the relation to the addressed, it can be even laudatory.

The Chinese term for “cuckold” is literally translated to “wearing a green hat” (带綠帽, dài lùe mào). It is because of this that it is extremely rare to see any Chinese man wearing a green hat.

In Trinidad & Tobago the term “horn” is used in conjunction with cuckolds, or anyone of either sex who has a cheating spouse. Other uses include “to horn” (to sleep with someone else’s spouse), “horning” (the act of cheating on your spouse), “horner-man” (a man who is sleeping with someone else’s spouse) and “horner-woman” (a woman who is sleeping with someone else’s spouse), “to get horn”, “to take (a) horn”. It is usually used in a pejorative sense. Numerous calypsoes have been written about the topic; the most famous being “Horn Me Sandra” by the calypsonian known as Lord Kitchener.

Interestingly this horn analogy extends even to Turkey where the cuckolded husband is termed boynuzlu or the “horned one”.
In animal behavior
“Cuckoldry” is also a term used in the study of animal behavior to denote brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other birds. The best-known example is the European Common Cuckoo from which the term derives. The cuckoo egg hatches earlier than the host’s, and the cuckoo chick grows faster; in most cases the chick evicts the eggs or young of the host species. The chick has no time to learn this behavior, so it must be an instinct passed on genetically. The mother still feeds the cuckoo chick as if it were her own, the chick’s open mouth serving as a sign stimulus for the host to feed it.
 Cuckoldry as a fetish
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The term has acquired additional meanings within certain sub-cultures, referring to couples wherein the female is dominant and she takes on additional partners, while the male takes on a submissive role where he is monogamous to her, or only becoming involved sexually when it is felt to be emotionally supportive of her and her lover, or remaining altogether chaste. A man who fetishizes this situation is often referred to in the sub-culture as a “cuck”.

Cuckoldry as a fetish has been around since at least the time of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (the writer after whom the term “masochism” is coined). Sacher-Masoch’s wife, Aurora Rümelin, recounts in her memoirs multiple instances of Sacher-Masoch asking, begging and even threatening her to make her cuckold him so he could experience the pain and humiliation of the act. To that end, Sacher-Masoch created multiple opportunities for the adulterous act to occur, none of which were successful. While Rümelin indulged her husband in many of his masochistic requests, due in large part because to her dependence on him to financially support her and her children, she steadfastly refused to cuckold him. Rümelin’s refusal to succumb to Sacher-Masoch’s cuckolding fantasies was one of the causes of their separation and her subsequent descent into poverty.[citation needed]

The wife who enjoys cuckoldry is sometimes referred to as a hotwife. In a broader context, the contrast between a cuckold and the additional male participant (sometimes called a “stud” or “bull”) is sometimes used to summarize an individual’s personality or behaviour and the variability commonly seen in male libidos; the cuckold or beta male suggesting a lack of virility, perhaps sometimes having a small penis, impotence, infertility, vulnerability, weakness, or even anxiety and the stud or alpha male representing virility, potency, a larger phallus, fertility, dynamism, masculinity, strength and a sense of confidence in the ease with which he may sexually possess another man’s wife. There are some who consider the use of the term “bull” to be offensive, and this term is also not used commonly in the BDSM community.

Cuckolding among female-dominant couples differs from the original definition of cuckolding in that many of these men are voluntarily cuckolded by their wives, sometimes as part of the husband’s sexual fantasy and sometimes because they gain genuine sexual arousal through being humiliated by his wife being better sexually fulfilled with a potentially superior male. In some cases the husband may instigate and nurture his wife’s sexual infidelity, raising the question of who is truly the dominant partner. This is a common theme in letters to erotica magazines and online sites which focus on cuckoldry.

In most modern cases of fantasy cuckolding, the husband usually finds pleasure through that of his wife and they (the wife and extra-marital participant) may both enjoy attempting to actively include him in the act of cuckolding as much as possible through serving her. Some common themes include praising her appearance, attempting to stimulate her sexually at the same time as the additional participant, and generally being engrossed in her enjoyment, usually while masturbating or involving himself in some sexual act with his wife during their activity.

Some less-common themes might include grooming his wife for her “date”, homemaking, or oral sex following the conclusion of sex with the other man. When this oral sex follows ejaculation, it is termed a creampie or cleaning up. This involves the husband eating or licking the semen of another man from inside his unfaithful wife.
Cuckolding and homosexuality
In some cases, cuckolding is a means for the husband to express same-sex desires through his wife and/or directly with the additional participant.

In various alternative-lifestyle support groups and online forums, homosexuality is often a primary concern for both couples thinking about participating in cuckolding, with the heterosexual husband being cautious about the possibility of a homosexual encounter.
 Popularity of cuckolding
When cuckolding is a humiliation fantasy, it works best when the individual with the fantasy believes cuckolding is hopelessly the only choice for their relationship. This may be one of the reasons cuckold fantasy stories sometimes contain the theme that females are genetically predisposed to desire the “alpha-male”, prefer men with larger genitalia or that their wives are driven with wild lust.
Cuckolding as a dominant voyeuristic act
While word origin and most historic accounts define the cuckold husband as being submissive, powerless and/or in need of humiliation to receive stimulation, contemporary practice suggests the possibility of something altogether different. Rather than passively acceeding to the infidelity and desires of an errant wife, this cuckold is more in keeping with the male partners defined in polyamorous, open, or swinging relationships.

In this manifestation, the cuckold is a consummate voyeur… who derives great pleasure from seeing his “hot wife” or partner being pleasured and serviced by another male (or males…or a female). Although he assumes a submissive role and will often assist during the course of the sex act, the “cuckhold husband” may actually be the controlling, dominant party in the relationship. He may invite, encourage, and initiate consideration of the practice with his partner, and may be the one to make arrangements and approve how, when and with whom his wife may have the intended encounter. In street parlance, he may “pimp” his wife for the encounters he wishes.

Often, the excitement of the encounter with third parties is followed by more sex play between the relationship partners. The encounter becomes an aphrodisiac, helping to initiate and enhance further sex play between them, as visions of the encounter are revisited and replayed during subsequent love making sessions.
Cuckquean
The term “cuckold” is exclusively used for a male whose wife takes other partners; a woman whose husband strays in such fashion is known as a cuckquean. There are cases of women who enjoy being cuckqueaned, although they are probably less common than male cuckoldry. (Source: “Savage Love” column by Dan Savage, December 2007.)

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