cockpit

Etymology

From cock + pit.

noun

1. The driver's compartment in a racing car (or, by extension, in a sports car or other automobile).
2. The compartment in an aircraft in which the pilot sits and from where the craft is controlled; an analogous area in a spacecraft.
   Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines / Remove all the wheel blocks, there's no time to waste 3 September 1984, Steve Harris (lyrics and music), “Aces High”, in Powerslave, performed by Iron Maiden
3. (now chiefly historical) A pit or other enclosure for cockfighting.
   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[…] October 28, 2020, “Police officer raiding illegal cockfight gets killed by rooster”, in BBC News
4. (figurative) A site of conflict; a battlefield.
   India became the cockpit in which it was shown that trade was war carried on under another name. 2016, Peter Ackroyd, Revolution, Pan Macmillan, published 2017, page 170
5. (vulgar, slang) 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
6. (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
7. (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.
8. (nautical) A well, usually near the stern, where the helm is located.
9. (figurative) An area from where something is controlled or managed; a centre of control.