Cuckold

A cuckold is,appparently, "one of the few masculine specific words in the English language without a feminine counterpart".

Are there any others?

(Perhaps it is interesting to be reminded of those feminine specific words in the English language without the masculine counterpart as well).

I can't think of any right now... but I'm sure I will.

Hmmm interesting. The closest I could think of would be the word 'slut'.

My dictionary refers to a slut as a slovenly woman although dictionary.com gives that and the alternate (possible more current?) definition of an immoral or dissolute woman. I didn't want to go into too many listings on google for slut without my work internet usage being banned so just chose the first listing but I imagine it's a similar set of listings on other pages.

I am struggling to think of a male equivalent and I am not sure there is one - in popular usage anyway - which conveys the same degree of judgement or near venom. I would suggest that even if there was a masculine equivalent to the current usage of slut that it probably isn't particularly common. At least not by those who would use a word like slut.

There are synonyms which include words such as prostitute, harlot, whore, floozy, tramp and slattern. These probably do have masculine equivalents. I suppose you could argue that the synonyms have masculine equivalents and therefore, slut does. But I would struggle to think of a masculine equivalent to the intent behind the word. Current usage of course.

However, I stand to be corrected!

Edited by: sneaker_fish

There are thousands of feminine specific words: actress, stewardess, aviatrix, etc. At one time the masculine equivalents were masculine specific but no more: actor, steward, aviator, etc.

Then there are the livestock words: stallion, mare, bull, cow (not f. specific), cock, rooster, hen, duck not f. specific), drake, dog (not m. specific), bitch etc. And the game words: buck, doe, hart, hind, fox (not m. specific), vixen, etc.

Aside from those categories, I can only think of a couple of masculine specific words: pederast and catamite.

Also outside of those categories: geezer.

Bachelor, spinster, and of course various family relationships: father, uncle, brother, son, etc.

Sort of weird to single out cuckold as something special.

I must have misinterpreted the OP. I thought the OP was asking which words did not have an equivalent masculine or feminine term?

Slut for women brings to mind the hypocritical stud for men who are sexually promiscuous. I'm not sure if that fits the OP either.

No I wasn't sure about slut either, although I do think the intent behind the current usage of the word is hard to equate with a masculine word. Stud still has some 'positive' (albeit cheesey and slightly disparaging) qualities.

Eunuch?

Germaine Greer might disagree.

I was going to say "avuncular" but apparently not:

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19971119

#6 -- No, I'm the one who didn't read OP carefully.

So we've got:

harlot, whore, floozy, tramp and slattern, and maybe slut (I disagree with you about prostitute and maybe about whore and tramp);

the feminine-specific professions, which no longer have a masculine-specific counterpart;

drake, bull, bitch;

pederast, catamite, geezer, stud, eunuch.

Are there female curmudgeons?

Can a male be a smart cookie? (If anyone can be a smart cookie any more.)

There are some adjectives that seem always to go with one gender, usually female: shrill, feisty, etc. But that probably is another topic.

There are some adjectives that seem always to go with one gender, usually female: shrill, feisty, etc. But that probably is another topic.

Buxom, busty, but barren was she.

Easy peasy.

Oops I am confusing tonight. It was slut I thought was gender specific due to the intent or feeling behind the usage of the word. It is why I wasn't too sure myself if the word itself would count - after all, intent varies. But I can't think of whenever I have heard someone say 'slut' without almost passing a moral judgement on the person.

I would imagine that prostitute was either gender neutral - although perhaps mostly female - but even if it wasn't would be 'matched' with gigalo.

Edited by: sneaker_fish

I didn't realise smart cookie was gender specific either!

I definitely can't think of a feminine counterpart to curmudgeon.

The word “God” or “He”.

“Orgasm”. I’m fairly certain there is no known female equivalent.

A spinster is a single elderly woman. I can't think of a term for a single elderly man.

There is also 'lesbian' - a homosexual woman. There is no commonly used term for a gay man except 'gay man'.

I suspect there are other words related to same sex relationships that are gender specific.

I found an archaic female equivalent of cuckold.+ It's +cuckquean. "In the 16 and 17 th centuries, the wife of an unfaithful husband." It's in the OED.

Heywood, Proverbs 1562 "Ye make hir a cookquean."

Joyce used it in Ulysses:
A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay
betrayer, their common cuckquean

“Orgasm”. I’m fairly certain there is no known female equivalent.

The feminine of "orgasm" is "orgasm." In other words, this is a gender-neutral term. Unless you are being ironic.

A spinster is a single elderly woman. I can't think of a term for a single elderly man.

A spinster was actually a women who had passed the usual marriage age, but was still single. That didn't necessarily make her elderly. In Little Women, published in 1869, the heroine laments on the eve of her 25th birthday
>"An old maid, that's what I 'm to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame..."

The author goes on to moralize:
>At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will be ; at thirty they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact, and, if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully.

"Confirmed bachelor" used to be the term used for an old guy who never married, but it was also a euphemism for homosexual.

AH, here's the OED entry

'cuckquean, sb. Obs. Forms: 6 cook-, 6-7 cock-, cuc-, 7 cuck(e-; also 6 cut-, 7 quot-.
Etymology: f. stem of cuck-old + quean.

A female cuckold.

1562 J. Heywood Prov. & Epigr. (1867) 62 - Ye make hir a cookqueane.
1565 Golding Ovid's Met. vi. (1593) 146 - Queene Progne was a cutqueane made by meanes of her.
1614 Sco. Venus (1876) 39 - That hast made her a quot-queane shamefully.
1615 Heywood Foure Prentises Wks. 1874 II. 216 - Hee'd make his wife a Cucke-queane.
A. 1652 Brome City Wit iv. i, - To bee made Cuckqueane by such a Cockscombe.
1922 Joyce Ulysses 15 - A wandering crone..their common cuckquean.
Hence 'cuckquean v. trans., to make a cuckquean of.

1592 Warner Alb. Eng. viii. xli. (1612) 199 - Came I from France..to be Cuckquean'd heere?
A. 1652 Brome Mad Couple iii. i, - You can doe him no wrong..to cuckold him, for assure your selfe hee cuckqueans you.

Spinster matches bachelor although the usage of it differs somewhat. Bachelor still has some positive connotations whereas I am struggling to think of a time that where spinster had a positive spin.

I used to work in a capacity where I saw a lot of marriage and death certificates. It was always interesting looking at them because they covered a large period of time - approx 1900 to the early 90s. What I never realised was that Spinster and Bachelor were used in two ways on the certificates - as both occupation and marital status. While it was far more common for spinster to be written twice -as compared to bachelor - we used to find it interesting trying to work out what a bachelor was when it came to employment. General consensus was someone unemployed but supported by their family or other independant means. Probably completely incorrect but that was what we thought.

I suppose now with computer templates and specific fields and drop down menus there's less chance of ambiguous little descriptions and 'free text' being included in that kind of thing. Pity really.

Now I have found the word cuckoldess

What do you call this kind of word which has obviously been derived from a previously "shouldn't have been derived from" word?

Many thanks'

"Guy". Perhaps it doesn't exactly fit in the way OP contemplated, but I think it belongs here. Let me explain:

"Guy" is a versatile word. It can be applied to males of almost any age. I'm not sure it can be used for young children (except as "little guy"), but male teenagers and old men can both be referred to informally as "guy". With female humans, you always have to choose between "woman" and "girl".

I find myself unconsciously using "girl" for every woman up to a few years older than I am and "woman" for everyone older than that, but since that has pushed the girl/woman barrier well into the thirties now, I'm fearing that pretty soon I should stop doing that, or maybe I should have already. A female equivalent of "guy" would be very useful.

Agreed. Good example.

#22 -- That came up (in my mind and conversation, if nowhere else) in the 1970s, during the first flowering of second-wave feminism.

"Girl" became more or less taboo. Almost all females became women in all contexts (so that in US newspapers you'll see references to women of middle-school age).

The argument was that it was demeaning to call an adult male "boy" (as adult black males had been called in the south) so it was equally demeaning to call adult females "girl".

I argued that there were three pairs:

woman-man
guy-girl
boy-girl

And that it was a question of register. Informally we say guy and girl.

There is a word "gal" which in some dialects is the feminine of "guy" but "gal" was never part of my active vocabulary or that of anyone in my circle.

Another effect of this was that we no longer speak of our boys in Iraq or Afghanistan, as we spoke of our boys in Vietnam or Europe or the Pacific. You have to include both genders now, appropriately, and you can't say "our boys and girls" because of the taboo against "girl". So it has become "our men and women."

I have not read all the answers but this is a common issue in Argentina with a woman as President. Do we call it PresidentE or PresidentA? that is the question... most people use both in the same conversation as it goes out of their mouth..
Seems in Spanish PresidentA does not exist and the charge is PresidentE. So calling a woman by a masculine name sounds wierd.

itsa, #25, doesn't the use of the masculine or feminine article, "el" or "la" solve the problem of the "genderless" nouns in Spanish?

I know that I'm still just at novice at Spanish, but I've always thought that was a particularly graceful way of indicating the gender of the person being spoken or written about.

It solves half problem then there is the "noun" problem, whether you make it f or m. Spanish has that peculiarity which English has not got, almost all nouns have gender.
The say La PresidentE when they want to sound too scholastic and La PresidentA if they are popular.

Itsa, #27, Now I see what you meant. Much the same as "jefe" where some folks say "la jefe" (which is probably correct) and others say "la jefa" (which shouldn't be correct). Again, as a novice Spanish speaker, I was always taught that you should only change the article for a gender change unless the noun ended in "o", then you changed both the article and the final letter (o >> a) for a gender change from masculine to feminine, although it wasn't necessarily wrong to add an "a" to nouns ending in a consonant.

I have to laugh though at this wikipedia entry; "cornuto" is a light-hearted and inoffensive word...

Here in Sicily, calling someone 'cornuto' is a mortal insult that demands a violent response (with exceptions of course) in a way that it's hard to describe - English just doesn't have these kinds of words anymore.

#29 -- What wikipedia entry?

Here is the English Sign of the horns, but the phrase "cornuto is a light-hearted and inoffensive word" does not appear.

@vinnyD - the one referenced by the OP;

cuckold

"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"

In Sicily at least, it's extremely offensive to call a man "cornuto". Sure, you can call a mate 'cornuto' and it's jokey, but you call a guy in the street 'cornuto' and he's going to punch your lights out. And even with your friends, you need to be very sure that no offense will be taken before you use it...

In English, the term cuckold is rather archaic and using it today would be somewhat playful--providing everyone even knew the meaning, which is not likely.

Tell somebody "hey, dude, everybody knows your old lady's been steppin' out on ya, know what I mean?" and you could be in trouble.

Although to insult somebody and for them not to fully understand you could be a distinct advantage.

You ninnyhammer.

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/03/10-insulting-words-you-should-know/#/