cockpit

noun

1. 1

   historicalA pit or other enclosure for cockfighting.

   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.

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

   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. 2

   obsoleteA theater or other entertainment venue.

   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?

   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. 3

   figurativeA site of conflict; a battlefield.

   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.

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

4. 4

   The vagina.

   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.

   […] [S]o that her thighs duly diſclos'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. 5

   A valley surrounded by steep forested slopes.

   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

1. 1

   historicalThe area set aside for junior officers including the ship's surgeon on a man-of-war, where the wounded were treated; the sickbay.

2. 2

   A well, usually near the stern, where the helm is located.

3. 3

   The driver's compartment in a racing car (or, by extension, in a sports car or other automobile).

4. 4

   The compartment in an aircraft or spacecraft in which the pilot sits and from where the craft is controlled.

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

5. 5

   figurativeAn area from where something is controlled or managed; a centre of control.

Forms

plural

cockpits