cockpits

Noun (1)

cockpit (plural cockpits)

1. (historical) A 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.1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, pages 194–195
2. (broadly, obsolete) A 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?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...
3. (figuratively) A 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...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
4. (vulgar) 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.1658, John Eliot, Poems, London: Henry Brome
5. (Jamaica) 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.1803, R. C. Dallas, Esq., The History of the Maroons: […] , volume 1, London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, →OCLC, page 39

Noun (2)

cockpit (plural cockpits)

1. (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.

See all 10 meanings of cockpit