I obſerv'd a Place where there had been a Fire made, and a Circle dug in the Earth, like aCockpit, 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, aboutHeptonstall:
Acockpit, 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 licensedcockpits on Sundays and legal holidays, as well as during local fiestas lasting a maximum of three days[…]
(by extension,obsolete) Atheater or other entertainment venue.[from 16th c.]
But pardon, and gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object: can thiscockpit 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:
TheCockpit or Phoenix Theatre in Drury Lane stood in the parish of St. Giles'-in-the-Fields, on what is now Pitt-place—properlyCockpit-place or Alley.
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, page74:
Hungary is become the onelyCockpit 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, published2017, page170:
India became thecockpit in which it was shown that trade was war carried on under another name.
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 hercock-pit; / And rather then be barren; play the whore, / As her great mother hath done heretofore.
[…] 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 thecock-pit ſo fair, that it was not in nature even for a natural to miſs it:[…]
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.
(nautical, now historical) The area set aside for junior officers including the ship's surgeon on aman-of-war, where the wounded were treated; thesickbay.[from 17th c.]
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.
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