A cuckold is a man with an unfaithful wife. There are connotations of helplessness and humiliation attributed to the word: implications that the husband is helpless to stop her infidelity, and too cowardly to leave the wife. "Cuckold" appears in older texts as a highly insulting and pejorative term. Image of a man on the Pioneer plaque sent to outer space A man is a male human adult, in contrast to an adult female, which is a woman. ... In a religious context, infidelity is lack of the faith that a religion requires; one who lacks such faith is an infidel. ... Marriage is a relationship that plays a key role in the definition of many families. ... Humiliation is literally the act of being made humble, or reduced in standing or prestige. ...

Cuckolds are sometimes written of as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns". This goes back to an unsubstantiated reference to a tradition in villages of unknown European location where the community gathers to collectively humiliate a man whose wife gives birth to a child recognizably not his own. This is said to have been a parade where the hapless husband is forced to wear antlers on his head as a symbol of his wife’s infidelity. Whether this actually happened or not is irrelevant to the phrase, which survived. In Italy and Spain, "horns" are a metaphor for suffering the infidelity of a partner, not limited to husbands in modern usage. The gesture of the horned hand ( ) can be used to insult the cuckold; the Italian translation, cornuto literally means horned (This sometimes causes confusion in Italians who are learning English and encounter the word horny). 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 mano cornuto (horned hand) gesture, also known as the devil horns, goat horns, Hook em Horns, throwing the goat, or just the horns is made by making a fist and extending the index finger and the pinky, . This is not to be confused with , the American Sign language I... Mano cornuto; based on Image:HornDiagram. ... Profanity is a word choice or usage which its audience considers to be offensive. ...

The history of the word is thought to be related to the Cuckoo bird, who is known to put its eggs in another bird's nest. Some think that this points to another hallmark of the cuckold—the raising of a child that is not his own. Genera See text. ...

The Chinese term for this translates as "wearing a green hat".

Recent usage

The term has made a resurgence in the late 20th century amongst non-monogamous couples with a dominant female allowed to take on additional partners, and a submissive male who is not. This might be regarded as a subculture within the swinging subculture itself. This differs from the original definition in that these men are voluntarily "cuckolded" by their wives, as part of the husband's sexual fantasy of gaining sexual pleasure from being humiliated by his wife—indeed, the husband may even be the instigator of this practice, raising questions about who is truly the dominant and who the truly submissive partner. This is a common theme in letters to pornographic magazines. It is unclear how common this phenomenon is in real life as opposed to fantasy. The word dominant has several possible meanings: In music theory, the dominant or dominant note (second most important) of a key is that which is a perfect fifth above the tonic; in just intonation the note whose pitch is 1. ... This article is about the erotic activity. ... Swinging, sometimes referred to in North America as the swinging lifestyle or simply the lifestyle (although this simplified term is also used by people into Leather and BDSM), includes a wide range of sexual activities conducted between three or more people. ... A sexual fantasy is a fantasy of a sexual nature. ...