Rabelais's Tiers Livers of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1546) portrays a horned fool as a cuckold. The term is quite offensive, especially for men, and cornos are a common subject of jokes and anecdotes. In Brazil and Portugal, the term used is " corno", meaning exactly "horned". In German, the term is " jemandem Hörner aufsetzen", or " Hörner tragen", the husband is " der gehörnte Ehemann". In French, the term is " porter des cornes". In Italy (especially in Southern Italy, where it is a major personal offence), the insult " cornuto" is often accompanied by the sign of the horns. This is an allusion to the mating habits of stags, who forfeit their mates when they are defeated by another male. In Western traditions, cuckolds have sometimes been described as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns". CuckĪ flag used in the English Civil War by Horatio Cary referring to the Earl of Essex's notorious marital problems The female equivalent cuckquean first appears in English literature in 1562, adding a female suffix to the cuck.Ī related word, first appearing in 1520, is wittol, which substitutes wit (in the sense of knowing) for the first part of the word, referring to a man aware of and reconciled to his wife's infidelity. The word often implies that the husband is deceived that he is unaware of his wife's unfaithfulness and may not know until the arrival or growth of a child plainly not his (as with cuckoo birds). Shakespeare's writing often referred to cuckolds, with several of his characters suspecting they had become one. It was characterized as an overtly blunt term in John Lydgate's The Fall of Princes, c. The association is common in medieval folklore, literature, and iconography.Įnglish usage first appears about 1250 in the medieval debate poem The Owl and the Nightingale. The word cuckold derives from the cuckoo bird, alluding to its habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests. 1815 French satire on cuckoldry, which shows both men and women wearing horns
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