why is it called cockpit

Cock-pit. the word may sound vulgar or maybe Misogynic. but truth may differ. lets find out.


The word cockpit, was originally a sailing term for the coxswain's station in a Royal Navy ship, and later the location of the ship's rudder controls. Cockpit first appeared in the English language in the 1580s, "a pit for fighting cocks", from cock and a pit. Used in nautical sense in 1706, for midshipmen's compartment below decks, transferred to airplanes in 1914 and to cars in 1930s. From about 1935 cockpit came to be used informally to refer to the driver's seat of a car, especially a high performance one, and this is official terminology in Formula One. In an airliner, the cockpit is usually referred to as the flight deck, the term deriving from its use by the Royal Air Force for the separate, upper platform in large flying boats where the pilot and co-pilot sat. In the US and many other countries, however, the term cockpit is also used for airliners.


BUt HOw did it became cock-pit?


The earliest airplanes copied the designs of the 1903 Wright Flyer, on which the pilot lay on the wing, in the open and subject to the wind.





As airplanes developed over the next five years, constructors like France's Louis Blériot built and enclosed a space to protect the pilot from the wind and cold. This space had a slight resemblance to a cockpit, the small round enclosure, in which two fighting cocks were thrown. The term was already used in sailing vessels, and was in widespread use in aviation by 1913. From aviation, it seems to have spread to sailboating and to auto racing.





So, the word is not a corruption of another word nor mean anything Vulgar.

cockpit