noun

• (now chiefly 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."
• (by extension, 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?"
• (figurative) 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 party."
• (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."

noun

• (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.
• (nautical) A well, usually near the stern, where the helm is located.
• (figurative) An area from where something is controlled or managed; a centre of control.