Re: how many bastards are there, anyway?

Judy Johnson (jjohnson@asrr.arsusda.gov)
Mon, 26 Aug 1996 19:43:23 GMT

Matt Beckwith <beckwith@jaxnet.com> wrote:

[quite a bit snipped to get to:]

>Wow, somebody actually answered a post of mine with something other than
>hostility. I think this is going to be a good day!

>So it isn't that cuckolds are superior by virtue of being cuckolds, but
>that women sleep with men who are attractive to them, and the attractive
>men become cuckolds because so many women want them.

Well, I hope this isn't taken as being hostile, but I'd like to
politely point out that you've got your cuckold on the wrong foot.

>From my American Heritage dictionary:

[begin quote]

cuckold (k€k€eld, k€k€-) noun; A man married to an unfaithful wife.

verb, transitive; cuckolded, cuckolding, cuckolds; To make a cuckold
of.

[Middle English cokewald, from Anglo-Norman *cucuald, from cucu, the
cuckoo, from Vulgar Latin *cucc€lus, from Latin cuc€lus.]

Word History: In our era of more relaxed sexual mores, the allusion to
the cuckoo on which the word cuckold is based may be little
appreciated. The female of some Old World cuckoos lays its eggs in the
nests of other birds, leaving them to be cared for by the resident
nesters. This parasitic tendency has given the female bird a
figurative reputation for unfaithfulness as well. Hence in Old French
we find the word cucuault, composed of cocu, "cuckoo, cuckold," and
the pejorative suffix -ald and used to designate a husband whose wife
has wandered afield like the female cuckoo. An earlier assumed form of
the Old French word was borrowed into Middle English by way of
Anglo-Norman. Middle English cokewold, the ancestor of Modern English
cuckold, is first recorded in a work written around 1250.

[end quote]

So if the attractive man is not married to the woman, he is not the
cuckold, because that's in the husband's job description.

Judy "at last, my semester of college Shakespear comes in handy"
Johnson