different between uxorious vs meacock

English

Etymology

Latin uxorius (“of or pertaining to a wife”) from uxor (“wife”), late 16th c..

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?k?s???.i.?s/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?k?s??.i.?s/, /???z??.i.?s/

Adjective

uxorious (comparative more uxorious, superlative most uxorious)

1. Very devoted and possibly submissive to one's wife.
   • 1991, The Advertiser, 12 Oct.,

     She was the cross her cuckolded, incompatible husband had to bear, and he was—beneath those fantastic uniforms—the pathetic, uxorious human aggregate of love and good intentions, which, quite frankly, bored her most of the time.

Synonyms

• doting

Coordinate terms

• maritorious

Related terms

• uxorial
• uxoricide

Translations

English

Etymology

Probably a blend of meek +? peacock, or from meek +? -cock (“diminutive suffix”). For use of cock as a diminutive suffix, see also niddicock.

Noun

meacock (plural meacocks)

1. (obsolete) An uxorious, effeminate, or spiritless man; a meek man who dotes on his wife, or is henpecked.
   • 1593-1594, William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, ii 1

     Petruchio: How tame, when men and women are alone / A meacock wretch can make the curstest shrew.

   • 1604, Thomas Decker and Thomas Middleton, The Honest Whore

     Viola: a woman’s well holp’d up with such a meacock. I had rather have a husband that would swaddle me thrice a day, than such a one that will be gull’d twice in half an hour.

   • 1876, Henry Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde., A Dramatic Romance., In Two Parts., Henry S. King & Co. (London), page 86

     Earl: A man that as much knowledge has of war / As I of brewing mead ! ... A bookish nursling of the monks—a meacock !

References

• meacock in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.