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A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife (or partner for unmarried companions); the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. A husband who is aware of and tolerates his wife's infidelity is sometimes called a wittol or wittold. The slang term bull refers to the dominant man who has relations with the cuckold's partner.
English usage first appears about 1250 in the medieval debate poem The Owl and the Nightingale. It was characterized as an overtly blunt term in John Lydgate's The Fall of Princes, . William Shakespeare's writing often referred to cuckolds, with several of his characters suspecting they had become one.
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).
The female equivalent cuckquean first appears in English literature in 1562, adding a feminine suffix to the cuck.
A 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.Oxford English Dictionary
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. In French language, the term is "porter des cornes". In German, the term is "jemandem Hörner aufsetzen", or "Hörner tragen", the husband is "der gehörnte Ehemann".
In Brazil and Portugal, the term used is "corno", meaning exactly "horned". The term is quite offensive, especially for men, and cornos are a common subject of jokes and anecdotes.
Rabelais's Tiers Livers of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1546) portrays a horned fool as a cuckold. In Molière's L'École des femmes (1662), a man named Arnolphe (see below) who mocks cuckolds with the image of the horned buck ( becque cornu) becomes one at the end.
The Greek hero Actaeon is often associated with cuckoldry, as when he is turned into a stag, he becomes "horned". This is alluded to in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, and others.
If a couple can keep the fantasy in the bedroom, or come to an agreement where being cuckolded in reality does not damage the relationship, they may try it out in reality. This, like other sexual acts, can improve the sexual relationship between partners. However, the primary proponent of the fantasy is almost always the one being humiliated, or the "cuckold": the cuckold convinces his lover to participate in the fantasy for them, though other "cuckolds" may prefer their lover to initiate the situation instead. The fetish fantasy does not work at all if the cuckold is being humiliated against their will.
Psychology regards cuckold fetishism as a variant of Sadomasochism, with the cuckold deriving pleasure from being humiliated. In his book Masochism and the Self, psychologist Roy Baumeister advanced a Self Theory analysis that cuckolding (or specifically, all masochism) was a form of escaping from self-awareness, at times when self-awareness becomes burdensome, such as with perceived inadequacy. According to this theory, the physical or mental pain from masochism brings attention away from the self, which would be desirable in times of "guilt, anxiety, or insecurity", or at other times when self-awareness is unpleasant.
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