Word for the Wise

April 27, 2007 Broadcast

Topic: Cockpit

A fellow who may or may not work at a major airport asked how the cockpit—a space in the fuselage of an airplane for the seating of the pilot or pilot and crew—came by that name. His theory had something to do with the former prevalence of males in that position; rather than viewing his suggestion as fighting words, we'll admit that the earliest sense of cockpit, dating to the late 1500s, did indeed name "a pit or enclosure used for cockfights," contests of gamecocks usually heeled with metal gaffs and set at each other.

The violence of that setting helped cockpit soon develop an extended sense naming "any place noted for especially bloody, violent, or long-continued conflict."

When warships set sail in the early 1700s, cockpit was borrowed as a name for the "below-waterline compartment where the wounded were tended during engagements and where junior officers were quartered."

Cockpit retained its sea legs for another sense born in the same era: the area from which a yacht or other small vessel is steered. Then, in the early 1900s, cockpit went on to became another navigation term to move from the water to the air when it found a home in the new airplane industry.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.