What is Eunuch?

Answer 1

All of the above. Also, some knights in the Dark Ages actually castrated themselves, I read once. To keep themselves "pure," I guess.

I also read (admittedly in a sex novel) that slave boys in the Americas were castrated before being assigned to household duties, but I don't know if that's true.

I also read (for real) that a women-dominated tribe in North Africa once castrated pubescent boys to use as concubines (typically they could still maintain erections for a year or so, the article said, and were given assigned duties in the village after that).

The point being that without testicles, there are no male hormones, so men lose their ability to have or want sex and are therefore "safe" around women. Or, in the case of the castrati (for which I will never forgive the Catholic church!!), the lack of hormones means that they never sexually mature and that their voices keep a boy's soprano pitch, but with the power of adult-sized lungs.

I also read (in a Social Studies book) that some doctors castrated allegedly mentally challenged boys in orphanages around the early 1920's as an experiment because it made them more "docile" and easier for the staff to handle.

Some things I wish I didn't know. Now you know, too.

Answer 2

A Eunuch is a man who had his testicles removed.
Notable apperances...
1) workers in the Forbidden City in China.
2) the "Castrata". The boys singing in the boys choir in Italy and Europe. It's banned now.
3) Any man who is made by his wife to go shopping with her.

Answer 3

A man who has been castrated, the term usually refers to those castrated in order to perform a specific social function, as was common in many societies of the past.