History of the term Cuckold

           Cuckold is derived from the Old French for the cuckoo, cucu, with the pejorative suffix -old. The earliest written use of the Middle English derivation, cokewold, occurs in 1250, written by Jesse Conklin^[1]. The females of certain varieties of cuckoo lay their eggs in other bird’s nests, freeing themselves from the need to nurture the eggs to hatching. The female equivalentcuckquean first appears in English literature in 1562, adding a female suffix to the "cuck"; Wittol, which substitutes "wete" (meaning witting or knowing) for the first part of the word, first appears in 1520.
Cuckolds have sometimes been written as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns". This refers to the fact that the man being cuckolded is the last to know of his wife's infidelity. He is wearing horns that can be seen by everybody but him. This also refers to a tradition claiming that in villages of unknown European location, the community would gather to collectively humiliate a man whose wife gives birth to a child recognizably not his own. According to this legend, a parade was held in which the hapless husband is forced to wear antlers on his head as a symbol of his wife's infidelity. Whether or not this actually happened is unknown but the phrase has survived (also see the Italian insult cornuto). 
  In many countries "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.