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Normally, we say

"He was caught with his mistress."

Here, we know that the male is a married person. The meaning is clear.

If he is not married, then we can say

"He was caught with his girlfriend."

But, how to convey that a married female was caught with her lover.

a female was caught with her ____.

Saying that, she was caught with her boyfriend does not clear the air that she is married or not.

So, is there any male-gender specific word opposite of mistress and clears the air that female is cheating her husband?

I googled few words: lover, sweetheart, loved one, love, beloved, darling, dearest, young man, man friend, man, escort, wooer, admirer etc.

And, from Wikipedia,

"Paramour" is sometimes used, but this term can apply to either partner in an illicit relationship, so it is not exclusively male.

But, none fits the requirement.

Bella Swan
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  • There isn't one. It's sort of implied if you say lover, especially if you have just said caught, which tells us you think she was doing something wrong. Otherwise you either spell out the fact that she is married to someone else or say something like was caught cheating on her husband. –  Apr 24 '19 at 11:00
  • @Minty my father caught me with my lover? Does it says, that I am married or not? –  Apr 24 '19 at 11:02
  • Also, why in the history we never required such a word? –  Apr 24 '19 at 11:03
  • No - it implies that you were doing something wrong, but since you mention your father I'd say the inference is that you are too young to have a lover, not that you are already committed to someone else. –  Apr 24 '19 at 11:04
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    The focus is on the husband in both cases - an example of how gendered language can be perhaps. If you think about words like mistress or madam and the male counterparts master and sir, there's quite a difference in usage... –  Apr 24 '19 at 11:05
  • @Minty that is really bad. –  Apr 24 '19 at 11:07
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    Despite what some dictionaries say, mistress does not imply marriage either. It just implies that the guy has a significant other that he is cheating on (or, alternatively, that he is in a BDSM relationship, in which case mistress retains its original meaning of ‘female master’). It may just be a girlfriend. I am not aware of any word, for males or females, that specifically means ‘the third party in an extramarital affair’, but I’m not aware of any male equivalent to mistress in this sense either. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 24 '19 at 11:23
  • I would say "master" and let people puzzle over the meaning. – Hot Licks Apr 24 '19 at 11:46
  • See also https://english.stackexchange.com/q/206702/191178 – Laurel Apr 24 '19 at 12:06
  • In former times when premarital sex was officially frowned upon, a single man could equally well be referred to as having a mistress. The counterpart would be 'lover'. – Kate Bunting Apr 24 '19 at 12:24
  • 'Paramour' is extremely outdated/purple prose. 'Lover' is more recent (60's) but is a bit cringeworthy. Nowadays, I feel like a noun wouldn't be used at all (for either gender), just something like 'they're seeing someone else' or they're having an affair' – Mitch Apr 24 '19 at 13:13
  • It is interested to see that without looking into definition of paramour you all marked it as a duplicate. Paramour is a gender neutral word. I already stated in my description. Instead, I would prefer that you say me "there are no such word in English language". –  Apr 24 '19 at 14:24

2 Answers2

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Rather like mistress can refer to women connected to unmarried people but usually refers to a woman with a married man, the other man usually refers to a man with a married woman.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives this definition and these examples:

other man n. the lover of a married woman or female partner.

1886 R. Kipling Other Man in Civil & Mil. Gaz. 13 Nov. 3/3 They married her when she..had given all her poor little heart to another man... We will call him the Other Man.

1966 ‘S. Ransome’ Hidden Hour ii. 20 She had been here before. With the ‘other man’?

1994 Sunday Times 6 Mar. (Style & Travel section) viii. 4/1 He was cited by the Tory MP..as ‘the other man’ when he sued his wife..for divorce.

Other examples abound. There is the 2008 film The Other Man, in which a husband finds out about the other man in his now-deceased wife's life. (Side note: it's a bad movie.)

A recent popular romance novel called The Other Man has this on its first page:

For every hotwife and her husband, there's always the other man.

It definitely refers to a male partner from outside the relationship. In most usage, that relationship is a marriage.

Finally, what I particularly like about this phrasing is that its gender counterpart is so simple: the other woman.

Community
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TaliesinMerlin
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  • I can't open the link. Can you please upload the screen shot of OED? –  Apr 24 '19 at 14:24
  • @Oxi What do you need from the screenshot that you can't get from the quote? – TaliesinMerlin Apr 24 '19 at 14:25
  • Secondly, question is marked duplicate and the answer of the linked question is not correct. It has only created confusion now. –  Apr 24 '19 at 14:26
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Not an officially-sourced answer.

No time like the present to start breaking down gendered bias. You could use the word mistress.

Ian MacDonald
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