Wittal and cuckold

Use in the book

The opening wittal exemplifies selective blindness. He looks away from his wife’s infidelity while seeing other affairs all too sharply; the Juvenal margin recalls a man skilled at staring at the ceiling because overlooking adultery pays. A later satirical list calls similarly accommodating husbands horn mad. These passages use madness expansively for folly and vice. They do not supply a modern diagnosis, and their stereotype must not be taken as evidence about any actual marriage.

The marriage controversy deliberately changes sides. In its announced counter-parody, Burton answers the favourable arguments one by one: an absent husband’s wife may “perhaps” graft horns, and an unchaste wife may make him a Cornuto who raises another man’s children. The perhaps matters, as does the frame. Burton concludes that some spouses are good and some bad and nevertheless recommends taking the chance of marriage. Likewise, the scholar’s descent from grammar to hornbook occurs in an objection immediately followed by Beroaldo’s recantation and praise of his marriage. The dilemma faced by people whose livelihoods depend on remaining single has horns of another kind: marrying or abstaining seems to carry a cost. It is not an allegation of infidelity.

In the jealousy discussion, the difference between fear and occurrence remains crucial. The elderly husband in the Chaucer comparison fears being a cuckold; the term does not certify his suspicion. Burton’s ensuing claims about old husbands and young wives are gendered generalizations. He also argues in the opposite direction that groundless suspicion and confinement can provoke a previously faithful wife. His statement that this happened to the woman in Apuleius is his own addition to her complaint, not something established by the cited passage. A lawyer’s neglected wife in Aristaenetus threatens to cornute him if he continues attending to everyone’s business but hers; the audible threat is not reported as a completed affair.

Other accusations require equally careful attribution. The claim that conspicuously dressed churchgoers leave husbands bankrupt, if not cuckolded, grows out of a polemical charge extending Basil’s attack, rather than proof from appearance. The catalogue of secret tricks has an explicit marginal exclusion of chaste women. Some stories concern impersonation or violence: Neptune’s assumed appearance in the Tyro narrative makes the husband a cuckold in Burton’s wording without establishing the woman’s informed consent. A purported medical case is also misidentified: the Ctesias patient associated with Apollonides was the king’s widowed sister, not Artaxerxes’s wife. The label in Burton’s sentence preserves his error rather than proving it.

The later consolation starts with alternatives: perhaps the wife is faithful and the jealousy groundless; suppose instead the worst and the husband is a cuckold. Burton then argues that tormenting oneself and publicizing the matter only deepen the distress. His claim that the condition is common gathers ancient rulers, legendary heroes and jokes into one catalogue. Actaeon’s badge and bulls’ feathers turn their horns into mock heraldic ornaments; giving and taking horns distinguish the agent and the affected husband. The three thousand cuckold makers are alleged adulterers, not three thousand deceived husbands. Burton’s account changes Dio’s three thousand indictments, few prosecuted, into a simultaneous summons. Neither that number nor the mixed catalogue establishes universal infidelity.

Knowing toleration receives its fullest treatment after kind treatment, trust and discreet handling have been proposed. The buyer of cradles and Nevizzano’s Latin maxim about horns kept in the breast rather than displayed on the forehead commend private knowledge over public humiliation. Burton’s legal anecdote reverses the roles of Arnaud du Tilh and Martin Guerre, and his contrast between Cornelius Tacitus and Publius Cornutus plays on silence and publicly visible cuckoldry. The printed “condemn” remains an unresolved reading beside the advice to take no notice; it should not be silently changed to make the paragraph smoother.

The wittall passage then imposes a series of limits: certain times, certain cases, certain people. The husband may overlook an affair for his advantage or to satisfy a landlord, patron or benefactor, without becoming indiscriminately gullible. This is Burton’s historically situated counsel within unequal sexual and patronage relations, not advice adopted here. His story of Phayllus makes an explicit promise of office where the consulted Plutarch passage gives a hope for it; the discrepancy matters. The following Plautine material also changes speakers: Burton’s paraphrase makes Amphitryon accept being cuckolded by Jupiter, but the command to reconcile with Alcmena is Jupiter’s. Burton closes with endurance if the fault cannot be corrected. Elsewhere, his comic Coquage follows Jealousy, while a purported protection against cuckoldry based on an unattractive wife immediately receives a counterexample and a warning to understand the advice cautiously.

Related entries

Jealousy: Suspicion and the larger argument about jealousy (external volume).

Quean and slut: Gendered labels for women and their changing local senses.

Venery: Sexual conduct and appetite (external volume).

Marriage: The pro-and-con marriage controversy and its qualified conclusions.

Adultery: The conduct alleged by these labels and the limits of accusation.

Commodity: Commodity as advantage rather than merchandise.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 9–11selective judgment, the wittal, deliberate winking and the Juvenal ceiling-gazing margin note 671.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 15–17hypothetical universal observation and the figurative cuckolds’ horns among hidden affairs.
3. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 31–33horn mad within the satirical catalogue of folly, with the pun and unresolved citations in notes 1227–note 1228.
4. Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraphs 22–26the appearance and churchgoing polemic, Basil’s continuing attribution, and cornuto’s as a plural predicate rather than evidence of an affair.
5. By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men and Women, the Miseries of Marriage, the Consequences of Lust, and So Forth · paragraphs 8–10the conditional Cornuto warning in the hostile case against marriage, with the broadened Lucianic accusation.
6. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 48–52institutional and financial impediments, the horned dilemma and the following attributed continence counsel.
7. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 44–50the scholar’s hornbook, the possible secondary pun, and Beroaldo’s recantation and praise of his wife.
8. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraphs 29–36the announced counter-parody, perhaps grafting horns, the Cornuto proposition and the final qualified recommendation of marriage.
9. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 25–31fear of cuckoldry, Latin cornua and separate English grafting, age-based rhetoric and Burton’s addition to the Apuleius complaint.
10. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 51–57the neglected scholar’s anecdote, the conditional cornutos reddant and the lawyer’s wife’s audible threat rather than a reported completed affair.
11. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 16–18deception, violence and the Tyro impersonation story; the cuckold label does not establish the wife’s informed consent.
12. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence, Prolonged Absence, Beauty, Sexual Licence, Being Unfaithful Themselves. Temptations Arising From Time, Place and People; Mistreatment as a Cause · paragraphs 47–49cornute in the hostile catalogue of tricks, with Burton’s express marginal exclusion of chaste women in note 11578.
13. The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good Counsel; Disregarding It, Not Watching Women or Locking Them Up; Concealing It, and So On · paragraphs 23–34faithful wife versus hypothetical cuckold, minimizing consolation, attributed prevalence claims, agent/recipient distinction, the Dio discrepancy and mock horn imagery.
14. The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good Counsel; Disregarding It, Not Watching Women or Locking Them Up; Concealing It, and So On · paragraphs 19–32trust, kind treatment and dissimulation; cradles and private horns; literary anecdotes; the reversed Martin Guerre case; qualified wittall toleration; patronage advantage; distinct Plautine speakers and the concluding conditional endurance counsel.
15. Prevention Before or After Marriage: Plato’s Community of Wives; Marrying a Courtesan; Love Potions; Brothels; Marrying Someone Equal in Age and Fortune, From a Good Family, Well Educated and of Good Standing; Treating Wives Well; and So On · paragraphs 32–36Coquage’s comic personification, Rabelais attribution, beauty and character, the counterexample to supposed protection and Burton’s caution.
16. Prevention Before or After Marriage: Plato’s Community of Wives; Marrying a Courtesan; Love Potions; Brothels; Marrying Someone Equal in Age and Fortune, From a Good Family, Well Educated and of Good Standing; Treating Wives Well; and So On · paragraphs 1–4reassurance and reported dangers from visitors, including the wrongly identified Artaxerxes case and its correction in note 11954.

In this edition

The inherited pairs make the principal distinction explicit: “a wittal” → “a willing cuckold”, and “a wittall” → “a knowing cuckold”. Willing and knowing explain the additional tolerance and awareness. They do not turn every cuckold into a wittal. “Graft hornes” → “give you cuckold’s horns” explains the conventional metaphor, supplying you from the addressed husband and cuckold’s from the image; the surrounding perhaps remains essential.

The related forms require different grammatical treatment. “If not cornuto’s” becomes “if not cuckolded”, replacing the printed plural noun with a participle. “Threatned to cornute him” becomes “threatened to make him a cuckold”; the threat remains a threat. Latin cornua supplies horns, while its verb and dative supply will give you, with she supplied from the preceding young woman. In “& cornutos reddant” → “and make them cuckolds”, the adjective supplies cuckolds, the verb make, and them comes from the earlier husbands. Burton’s separate English versions are not silently treated as literal equivalents of every Latin component.

“Three thousand cuckold makers” becomes “three thousand makers of cuckolds”, preserving the agents rather than reversing them with the husbands. “Cornutum sophisma” becomes “a horned dilemma”, where the horns belong to difficult alternatives. The names Cornelius Tacitus and Publius Cornutus remain names whose punning functions are explained, and the literary and historical qualifications remain attached. Throughout, the article preserves the difference between suspicion, deception and knowingly tolerated infidelity within Burton’s gendered satire and changing arguments; it does not authenticate the accusations.

commodity

Printed “commodity” (English; lemma).

Advantage or benefit.

Here: Commodity names the husband’s advantage, including possible patronage benefit, rather than an article of merchandise. The modern recasts for his advantage as a verbal predicate.

Context: The benefit is one conditional reason in Burton’s disturbing advice to tolerate a powerful man’s access to a wife. It is not a moral endorsement by the lexicon; Plutarch does not state Burton’s explicit promise of office.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: for his commodity

Modern rendering: serves his advantage

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Original for his commodity is recast as serves his advantage within if it...; serves supplies the predicative relation, not an additional lexical meaning of commodity.

Coquage

Printed “Coquage” (English; lemma).

A comic personification of cuckoldry.

Here: The name identifies the supposed god accompanying Jealousy; it is explicitly introduced as something said merrily.

Context: Burton compresses a Rabelais satire, known here through a later English comparison, rather than describing an actual cult. His claims linking beauty to infidelity are rhetorical; the following counterexample and caution complicate simplistic spouse-selection rules.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Coquage god of Cuckolds

Modern rendering: Coquage, the god of cuckolds

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

cornu

Printed “cornua” (Latin; lemma).

Horns: plural of Latin cornu, here the conventional sign of cuckoldry.

Here: Faciet means will make or give, tibi to you, cornua horns. The subject she is supplied from the preceding young woman; the Latin does not itself contain the English restatement’s grafting or surely.

Context: The saying attributed to Nevizzano is a conditional warning in the polemic on marriages of old men and young women. Burton’s separate English paraphrase is retained, not merged into the Latin.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: faciet tibi cornua

Modern rendering: she will give you horns

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The Latin verb and dative supply will give you; she is supplied from the antecedent. Cornua supplies only horns.

Further local use

Printed “cornua” (Latin; lemma).

Citation key: cornu.

Here: Cornua again signifies cuckoldry: sapientes wise men, portant bear, in pectore in the breast, stulti fools, in fronte on the forehead. The second clause omits the repeated verb and object. English supplies their and idiomatically pluralizes the body parts.

Context: Nevizzano’s maxim contrasts private knowledge with public display. Burton’s own English hearts restatement follows the separately translated Latin breasts; anecdotes of rulers remain uncollated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Sapientes portant cornua in pectore, stulti in fronte

Modern rendering: Wise men bear their horns in their breasts; fools on their foreheads

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The full antithetical sentence is aligned; their is supplied, while the Latin singular breast/forehead is rendered distributively as plural.

cornute

Printed “cornute” (English; lemma).

To make someone a cuckold.

Here: Cornute is the verb; the wife threatens the result if her lawyer husband continues neglecting her. The threat is audible to him, not reported as a completed affair.

Context: Burton reports an Aristaenetus letter with legal and sexual double meanings. The underlying Greek has not been directly collated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: threatned to cornute him

Modern rendering: threatened to make him a cuckold

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “cornute” (English; lemma).

Citation key: cornute.

Here: The verb expresses making husbands cuckolds; the infinitive names the supposed purpose of concealed tricks.

Context: Burton’s hostile generalization is explicitly restricted by his next marginal note: what is said does not prejudice honest, meaning chaste, women. That qualification belongs with the accusation.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to cornute their husbands

Modern rendering: to make their husbands cuckolds

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “cornuted” (English; lemma).

Citation key: cornute.

Here: Cornuted is the passive participle of cornute: Jupiter is named as the agent, Amphitryon as the husband.

Context: Burton’s English paraphrase expressly adds cuckoldry to the preceding Plautus verse. The following reconciliation command is Jupiter’s speech, not Amphitryon’s; neither is present-day advice.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to be cornuted by Jupiter

Modern rendering: to be cuckolded by Jupiter

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “cornuted” (English; lemma).

Citation key: cornute.

Here: Cornuted is the participial adjective cuckolded, rendered horned to retain the image in the catalogue.

Context: The catalogue combines legend and historical allegations and expressly says it seems; it does not verify each named ruler’s household.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: cornuted Kings and Princes

Modern rendering: horned kings and princes

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

cornuto

Printed “Cornuto” (Italian loan in English; lemma).

A cuckold; Italian cornuto, literally horned, used as a noun in English.

Here: The borrowed noun names the husband in the counter-parody’s claim that he raises another man’s children. It does not itself add the wittal’s knowledge or tolerance.

Context: This is the tenth hostile proposition in a deliberately opposed exercise; Burton’s subsequent conclusion accepts marriage despite the mixed possibilities.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a Cornuto

Modern rendering: a cuckold

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “cornuto’s” (Italian loan with English plural spelling; lemma).

Citation key: cornuto.

Here: Cornuto’s is the printed plural form, not a possessive here; the modern uses cuckolded as a predicative participle. If not retains the rhetorical escalation beyond bankruptcy.

Context: The charge occurs in a polemic against women’s conspicuous dress and churchgoing, extending the cited Basil attack. Appearance is not evidence of actual infidelity.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: if not cornuto’s

Modern rendering: if not cuckolded

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Plural noun predicate becomes participial cuckolded; if not is retained as the argument’s conditional escalation.

Further local use

Printed “Cornuto” (Italian loan in English; lemma).

Citation key: cornuto.

Here: Cornuto names the husband supposedly made a cuckold if his wife is beautiful and wanton.

Context: The conditional is part of an anti-marriage warning that cites and broadens a speaker’s polemic in the work transmitted as Lucian’s Loves; it is not a finding about beautiful women.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: make thee a Cornuto

Modern rendering: make a cuckold of you

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

cornutum sophisma

Printed “Cornutum sophisma” (Latin; phrase).

A horned dilemma: an argument offering two dangerous alternatives.

Here: Cornutum means horned and sophisma a sophism or difficult argument; the local alternatives are loss of livelihood through marriage or distress from remaining unmarried. English supplies a.

Context: This use of horned does not mean adultery. Burton acknowledges some people may marry freely before describing institutional and financial obstacles; the next continence counsel is attributed to Beza.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cornutum sophisma

Modern rendering: a horned dilemma

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The Latin noun phrase is rendered idiomatically as dilemma, with supplied article; horned names the difficult alternatives, not a cuckold.

cornutus

Printed “cornutos” (Latin; lemma).

Horned or cuckolded: Latin accusative masculine plural adjective used predicatively.

Here: Cornutos agrees with the previously named husbands; reddant supplies make, and the modern supplies them from viros in the earlier clause. The whole claim remains governed by if.

Context: The attributed Neander question excuses retaliation by wives first deceived by their husbands. It is an argumentative question, not an independently endorsed rule.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: & cornutos reddant

Modern rendering: and make them cuckolds

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: And corresponds to &, make to reddant, cuckolds to predicative cornutos; them is supplied from the earlier viros. The governing if lies in the preceding clause.

cuckold

Printed “cuckold” (English; lemma).

A husband whose wife has sexual relations with another man.

Here: The noun names the husband’s condition without itself saying whether he knows, tolerates it or has only been accused. Here the clause is expressly hypothetical, introduced by put case which is the worst.

Context: Burton first allows that the wife may be faithful and the husband’s suspicion groundless, then supposes the contrary to argue for endurance. His minimizing consolation is not a factual finding or modern relationship advice.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: he be a cuckold

Modern rendering: he is a cuckold

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The subjunctive be is recast as is inside a separately retained supposition, not asserted as a fact.

Further local use

Printed “Cuckold” (English; lemma).

Citation key: cuckold.

Here: Cuckold is the feared condition, not a proved event; the modern renders to be as being made.

Context: The preceding Chaucer comparison concerns the old husband January and his young wife. The couplet is not treated as a verified verbatim Chaucer quotation, nor age difference as proof of infidelity.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: he feared to be a Cuckold

Modern rendering: he feared being made a cuckold

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “cuckold” (English; lemma).

Citation key: cuckold.

Here: The noun is a complement of made: the wife is said to make her husband a cuckold in retaliation for confinement. Keeping her up means confining her.

Context: Burton adds the retaliatory adultery claim to an Apuleius complaint where it does not occur, then argues that groundless suspicion and harsh treatment can produce what they fear. This is his expansion, not a demonstrated universal mechanism.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: she made him a cuckold for keeping her up

Modern rendering: she made him a cuckold for keeping her confined

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “cuckold” (English; lemma).

Citation key: cuckold.

Here: The noun names the husband in Burton’s mythic account of Neptune assuming his appearance; English supplies a. It cannot by itself establish the wife’s informed consent.

Context: The story is embedded among coercion and abduction narratives, and the Tyro names and sources remain uncollated. Burton’s label describes the husband’s position, not a reliable adjudication of the wife’s agency.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: made him cuckold

Modern rendering: made him a cuckold

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The same result construction is retained with the supplied indefinite article a.

Further local use

Printed “cuckold” (English; lemma).

Citation key: cuckold.

Here: The noun-complement construction is condensed into a modern verb naming the alleged injury to the king.

Context: Burton misstates the Ctesias episode: the patient was the king’s sister Amytis, widow of Megabyzus, not his wife. The medical deception and punishment are reported historical narrative, not a validated case or prescription.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: made Artaxerxes cuckold

Modern rendering: cuckolded Artaxerxes

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Made... cuckold becomes the finite verb cuckolded, retaining Artaxerxes as its object while preserving Burton’s mistaken identification.

cuckold maker

Printed “cuckold makers” (English; phrase).

People who make husbands cuckolds; adulterers, rather than the husbands affected.

Here: The compound identifies the agents, corresponding to the preceding Latin adulterers. It must not be mistaken for three thousand deceived husbands.

Context: Burton transforms Dio’s docket of three thousand adultery indictments, few prosecuted, into a simultaneous summons of adulterers. The figure is not a verified number of convicted people.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: three thousand cuckold makers

Modern rendering: three thousand makers of cuckolds

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The compound makers is expanded into makers of; the number is retained as Burton reports it, with the source discrepancy explicit.

cuckold’s horns

Printed “cuckolds horns” (English; phrase).

Conventional figurative horns signifying cuckoldry.

Here: The phrase imagines marital infidelity made visible to an impossible universal observer. It does not denote bodily horns.

Context: The whole survey is hypothetical, assembled from literary devices for seeing hidden deeds. It does not assert that such an instrument exists.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: cuckolds horns

Modern rendering: cuckolds’ horns

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “Actæons badge” (English; phrase).

Citation key: Actaeon’s badge.

Here: Actaeon’s badge is the stag’s horns, transferred to cuckoldry from the myth of Actaeon’s transformation.

Context: Burton’s catalogue mixes legendary and historical rulers; it is a consolatory catalogue, not independently authenticated biography.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Actæons badge

Modern rendering: Actaeon’s badge

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “Bulls feathers” (English; phrase).

Citation key: bulls’ feathers.

Here: Bulls’ feathers is a comic name for horns, pictured as plumes in rulers’ crests.

Context: The mock heraldic language belongs to Burton’s mixed historical and legendary catalogue; it is not literal feathered cattle or verified heraldry.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Bulls feathers

Modern rendering: bulls’ feathers

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “given or taken horns” (English; phrase).

Citation key: give or take horns.

Here: Giving horns means making another a cuckold; taking them means being cuckolded. The alternatives distinguish agents from recipients.

Context: Burton asserts that rulers have played both roles; the accompanying catalogue is not a verified claim about every named person.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: given or taken horns

Modern rendering: given horns or received them

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The shared horns object is repeated as horns/them in the modern coordination; given and taken name opposite roles.

cunarum emptor

Printed “Cunarum emptor” (Latin noun phrase in English syntax; phrase).

A buyer of cradles; proverbially a husband who knowingly overlooks doubtful paternity.

Here: Latin cunarum is genitive plural of cunae, cradle, and emptor means buyer; the English article is already supplied in Burton’s mixed-language phrase.

Context: Nevizzano presents dissimulation as the lesser evil after kind treatment fails. The following absurd two-month-birth joke explains the proverb; it is not an obstetrical claim.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a Cunarum emptor

Modern rendering: a buyer of cradles

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

graft horns

Printed “graft hornes” (English; phrase).

To make a husband a cuckold, expressed through the image of attaching horns.

Here: Graft is a horticultural verb transferred to cuckoldry; hornes is the older spelling of horns. The modern supplies you from the addressed husband and cuckold’s to explain the conventional image.

Context: The wife perhaps does this during absence: perhaps must survive. This belongs to an announced counter-parody of pro-marriage arguments, followed by Burton’s acceptance of marriage despite risk.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: graft hornes

Modern rendering: give you cuckold’s horns

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The metaphor is glossed, not translated component for component: graft becomes give, you is supplied from the address, and cuckold’s explains the horns.

Alignment qualification: Perhaps lies outside the selected phrase but governs the claim; no actual affair is established.

Further local use

Printed “graft horns” (English; phrase).

Citation key: graft horns.

Here: The same transferred grafting image imagines cuckoldry as horns attached to a husband’s head.

Context: Burton’s English expands the preceding Latin warning and strengthens it with surely. The surrounding claims about old men and young wives are historical gendered rhetoric, not reliable predictions.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: graft horns on thy head

Modern rendering: graft horns onto your head

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

horn mad

Printed “horn mad” (English; phrase).

Extremely mad, with a pun here on the horns of knowingly tolerated cuckoldry.

Here: Horn mad combines an intensifying expression with the ensuing explanation that husbands let others sleep with their wives and knowingly overlook it.

Context: This is Burton’s broad satirical use of madness for folly and vice, not a clinical classification. The cited Proverbs/Martial references remain unreconciled.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: horn mad some of them

Modern rendering: Some are mad enough to wear cuckolds’ horns

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The short original predicate is expanded into a finite explanatory clause; are and enough to wear cuckolds’ horns make the pun explicit rather than reproducing a literal component translation.

hornbook

Printed “horne-book” (English; lemma).

An elementary learning aid or primer.

Here: The phrase imagines a scholar reduced from grammar studies to elementary lessons; the marriage context may also invite a cuckold’s-horns pun, but that secondary force is not certain.

Context: Some question whether scholars should marry; Burton immediately reports Beroaldo’s recantation and praise of his wife. The hostile view cannot be isolated as his conclusion.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: from his grammer to his horne-book

Modern rendering: from his grammar to his hornbook

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Publius Cornutus

Printed “Publius Cornutus” (Latin personal-name wordplay in English; phrase).

Publius Cornutus is a punning name suggesting a publicly known cuckold.

Here: Tacitus evokes silence; Publius publicity; Cornutus being horned. The comparison prefers keeping the matter private to advertising it through litigation. The names are retained rather than converted into an asserted historical pair.

Context: Burton reverses the roles of impersonator Arnaud du Tilh and Martin Guerre in the preceding example. The printed condemn remains unresolved despite the surrounding advice to disregard the matter.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cornelius Tacitus, than Publius Cornutus

Modern rendering: Cornelius Tacitus than Publius Cornutus

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The compared names are retained; their rhetorical senses are explained rather than treated as a literal translated sentence.

wink at

Printed “wink at” (English; phrase).

To deliberately overlook or pretend not to notice.

Here: Wink at concerns deliberate inattention; honesty here means sexual fidelity or chastity. The contrast with sharp sight in other matters makes the choice explicit.

Context: Burton’s satirical example is reinforced by Juvenal’s man who looks at the ceiling for profit; it is not an ordinary involuntary blink.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: wink at his wives honesty

Modern rendering: turn a blind eye to his wife’s chastity

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “wink at” (English; phrase).

Citation key: wink at.

Here: To close one’s eyes to the affair means knowingly overlook it; the demonstrative refers to the supposed infidelity.

Context: Burton limits this counsel to certain times, cases and persons and distinguishes selective tolerance from sleeping for everyone. The office-promise in his anecdote is not established by the consulted Plutarch text.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to wink at it

Modern rendering: to close his eyes to it

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

wittal

Printed “wittal” (English; lemma).

A husband who knows of and tolerates his wife’s infidelity.

Here: Willing explains the knowing tolerance added by wittal to cuckold. The ensuing contrast is between deliberately overlooking sexual infidelity and being sharply observant in other affairs.

Context: Burton’s satirical catalogue exposes selective judgment. The Juvenal margin depicts a man profiting by looking away; this is a literary example, not evidence against an identified spouse.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a wittal

Modern rendering: a willing cuckold

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “wittall” (English; lemma).

Citation key: wittal.

Here: Wittall is the spelling variant for the knowing, tolerant husband. Knowing makes the added awareness explicit, while put it up expresses acceptance.

Context: Burton recommends tolerance only at some times, in some cases, to some parties, including personal advantage or a patron’s wishes. His reported office-promise goes beyond the consulted Plutarch passage.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a wittall

Modern rendering: a knowing cuckold

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.