[Ads-l] cockpit (UNCLASSIFIED)

[George Thompson]

From: George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at listserv.uga.edu>
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 13:36:53 -0400
Subject: Cockpits
Some thoughts on the recent posts:
the gruesome cockpit of a quarter of a century back  (WDM)
Regarding the last item, I believe cockpit was the naval term used to refer
to the holding area for injured sailors during an engagement. Over time,
cockpits became operating theaters aboard ship. (DG)
I suppose "the holding area for injured sailors" would have been called the
"cockpit" because it was a "gruesome" bloody mess, like the pit after a
cockfight.

Conceive the lightest possible racing 'four' with a neat S-cylinder motor
perched in the very nose of her... a cockpit just behind the
mast fitted with neat arrangements for controlling the engine, the rudder,
and the planes
This connects early airplanes with racing sculls -- was there perhaps a
connection also made between the pilot who controlled the airplane and the
coxswain who controlled the scull?
(I had really thought that "coxswain" was written similarly to "boatswain",
which I have only seen written as "bosun", not so, the OED tells me.

Miles Huggarde, _The Displaying of the Protestantes_, 1556, p. 82 (EEBO)
"They stailed [stalled?] it aboute in maner of a Cocke pytte, where all the
people myght see them, and their comunion."  (BZ)
Here I make what we English majors call "a hypothetical emendation": stailed
[stalled?] is probably "stalked", in the sense of "strutted", which cocks
do, even barnyard cocks.

GAT

-- 

On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 2:05 PM MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY FUTURES
COMMAND (USA) <0000099bab68be9a-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
>
> Thanks.  And if I had read the OED entry more closely, I would have
> noticed that.
>
> > ----
> >
> > Regarding the last item, I believe cockpit was the naval term used to
> refer to the holding area for injured sailors during an engagement.
> > Over time, cockpits became operating theaters aboard ship.
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 5, 2019, 12:06 PM MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY
> FUTURES COMMAND (USA) <0000099bab68be9a-dmarc-
> > request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > And perhaps this should be thought of as a special case of theaters,
> > > but here it is applied to an operating theater:
> > >
> > > _Los Angeles Times_  sec 3 p 1 col 4
> > >  "The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery will have another spectacular
> > > display
> > > -- being, in fact, a full-size representation of the sick-bay of a
> > > battleship.  There will be a dispensary with its long line of
> > > alcoholic tinctures, upon which even a well Jacky looks with longing
> > > eyes, and the whole of its pharmaceutical outfit, a combined sick-bay
> > > and operating-room, with its four comfortable berths and its
> > > up-to-date glass operating table, and the rest of the accompaniments
> > > that make the sick-bay of today a very sunshiny contrast to the
> gruesome cockpit of a quarter of a century back."
> > >
> CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
>
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-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
picture of his great-grandfather.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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