cockpit

Noun

cockpit (plural cockpits)

1. (now chiefly historical) A pit or other enclosure for cockfighting. [from 16th c.]
   • 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, pages 194–195:

     I obſerv'd a Place where there had been a Fire made, and a Circle dug in the Earth, like a Cockpit, where it is ſuppoſed the Savage Wretches had ſat down to their inhumane Feaſtings upon the Bodies of their Fellow-Creatures.

   • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 224, about Heptonstall:

     A cockpit, which was still used for cock-fighting during the Napoleonic Wars, used to occupy the site of the vicarage.

   • 2020 October 28, “Police officer raiding illegal cockfight gets killed by rooster”, in BBC News:

     Cockfighting has been banned during the virus outbreak. Before the pandemic, it was allowed only in licensed cockpits on Sundays and legal holidays, as well as during local fiestas lasting a maximum of three days […]

2. (by extension, obsolete) A theater or other entertainment venue. [from 16th c.]
   • 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, prologue]:

     But pardon, and gentles all,
     The flat unraised spirits that have dared
     On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
     So great an object: can this cockpit hold
     The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
     Within this wooden O the very casques
     That did affright the air at Agincourt?

   • 1643, The Actor's Remonstrance or Complaint, for the silencing of their Profession and banishment from their several Play-houses, page 2:

     The Cockpit or Phoenix Theatre in Drury Lane stood in the parish of St. Giles'-in-the-Fields, on what is now Pitt-place—properly Cockpit-place or Alley.

3. (figurative) A site of conflict; a battlefield.
   • 1624, George Abbot (bishop), A Briefe Description of the Whole World, wherein is particularly described all the Monarchies, Empires and Kingdoms of the same, with their Academies, page 74:

     Hungary is become the onely Cockpit of the World, where the Turkes doe strive to gain, and the Christians at the charge of the Emperor of Germany (who entituleth himselfe King of Hungary) doe labour to repulse them: and few summers do passe, but that something is either wonne or lost by either party.

   • 2016, Peter Ackroyd, Revolution, Pan Macmillan, published 2017, page 170:

     India became the cockpit in which it was shown that trade was war carried on under another name.

4. (vulgar, slang) The vagina. [from 17th c.]
   • 1658, John Eliot, Poems, London: Henry Brome:

     If then the stone, as doctors tell the story, / Be a disease that prove hereditory, / I trust her daughter will have so much wit, / Early to get a cock for her cock-pit; / And rather then be barren; play the whore, / As her great mother hath done heretofore.

   • 1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the Second]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume II, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, page 191:

     […] ſo that her thighs duly diſclod'd, and elevated, laid open all the outward proſpect of the treaſury of love: the roſe-lipt ouverture preſenting the cock-pit ſo fair, that it was not in nature even for a natural to miſs it: […]

5. (Jamaica) A valley surrounded by steep forested slopes. [from 17th c.]
   • 1803, R. C. Dallas, Esq., The History of the Maroons: […] , volume 1, London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, →OCLC, page 39:

     The grand object of a Maroon chief in war was to take a ſtation in ſome glen, or, as it is called in the Weſt Indies, Cockpit, encloſed by rocks and mountains nearly perpendicular, and to which the only practicable entrance is by a very narrow defile.

Noun

cockpit (plural cockpits)

1. (nautical, now historical) The area set aside for junior officers including the ship's surgeon on a man-of-war, where the wounded were treated; the sickbay. [from 17th c.]
2. (nautical) A well, usually near the stern, where the helm is located. [from 18th c.]
3. The driver's compartment in a racing car (or, by extension, in a sports car or other automobile). [from 20th c.]
4. The compartment in an aircraft or spacecraft in which the pilot sits and from where the craft is controlled. [from 20th c.]
   • 1984, Steve Harris, “Aces High”, in Powerslave, performed by Iron Maiden:

     Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines / Remove all the wheel blocks, there's no time to waste

5. (figurative) An area from where something is controlled or managed; a centre of control. [from 20th c.]

Usage notes

Sometimes treated somewhat like a proper noun, with for example "en orm i cockpit" (a snake in cockpit) instead of "en orm i cockpiten" (a snake in the cockpit), similar to English.

Declension