Up in the air, Junior Birdmen.

Dear Word Detective: Where did the word “cockpit” come from?  Was there a petcock or cocktail or peacock involved in the naming for the pilot’s area of an airplane?  Secondly, how about “pilot”? — David Blanton.

Petcocks and cocktails and peacocks in the cockpit, oh my!  Makes me wish I’d learned to fly.  Then again, given my eyesight, we’re all glad I didn’t.  In fact, I realized the other day that I haven’t been on an airplane in more than fifteen years.  I’ll bet it’s much more fun than it used to be, right?

“Cockpit” in the sense of “area of an aircraft where the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, et al., sit” is just about as old as powered flight itself, first appearing in print around 1914.  But the word “cockpit” itself is much older, dating back the the late 16th century, and the “sport” which is the source of “cockpit” is probably much, much older.  A “cockpit” in the original literal sense is a pit dug in the ground where cockfights are held, “cockfights” being staged battles between roosters, often outfitted with metal spurs, on which bets are placed.  Although cockfighting is illegal in most countries today, it is still depressingly popular around the world.

By the early 1700s, “cockpit” was being used in a figurative sense for any arena of battle or conflict, especially if enclosed, or an area of intense and important activity.  It was this “place where the important things are done” sense (and not, thank heavens, the “fighting chickens” meaning) that led “cockpit” to be applied to the pilot’s compartment in an aircraft and, by extension, the “control position” in a racing car, sailboat or similar conveyance.

“Pilot” is also a very old word, and originally meant “one who steers a ship,” a sense expanded in the 20th century to include someone who flies an airplane.  English adopted “pilot” from French, but ultimately the word derives from the Greek “pedon,” meaning “steering oar” or “blade of a oar.”  Interestingly, the root of that “pedon” is the Indo-European root “ped,” meaning “foot,” also the source of our English “pedal” and “pedestrian,” among other words.

Since you mentioned those other words, we may as well illuminate them a bit.  A  “petcock” is not a tame chicken (chickens being among nature’s most savage beasts, of course), but rather a small faucet or spigot, usually found on a boiler or similar apparatus, where it is used to drain or relieve pressure.  The “pet” part probably comes from an old sense of “pet” meaning “small” (still found in “petty”), and the “cock” part most likely draws a comparison of the faucet handle to the comb of a rooster.

“Peacocks” are not especially fond of peas.  Their name is simply a modified form of the Latin name for the bird, “pavo” plus “cock” in the general sense of “male bird.”

As for “cocktail,” fuhgeddaboudit.  Etymologists have been arguing about this word since  it first appeared in print in 1806.  Search the internet for five minutes and you’ll find a dozen theories about the origins of “cocktail,” most of them absurd, some of them vaguely plausible, but not one of them possessing enough evidence on its side to settle the argument.  “Cocktail” is the Loch Ness Monster of lexicography, and I, for one, am happy to let this Nessie sleep with the fishes.

This just in.

Dear Word Detective:  I’ve always thought the term was “brand new,” but was re-reading E.M. Delafield’s “Diary of a Provincial Lady” recently, and noticed that she twice wrote “bran-new.”  What is the origin of this term?  Have I been mishearing it as “brand new,” or has it evolved? — Megan Coughlin.

This is an interesting question.  I actually answered a similar query about twelve years ago, but in that case a reader had seen “bran-new” in a newspaper, where it could easily have been a typographical error.  This time we’re talking about a very well-known semi-autobiographical novel that has been in print since 1930 and is widely considered a classic work of humor in Britain.

Incidentally, I was vaguely aware of E.M. Delafield (pen name of, fasten your seatbelts, Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood), but have never read “Diary of a Provincial Lady.”  According to Wikipedia, it’s a novel in the “form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman living mostly in a Devon [England] village of the 1930s.”  I found a brief excerpt online, and it seems to be the sort of thing I like, so I’ll add it to my to-read list (which, unfortunately, stretches through 2075 at this point).  By the way, if I were going to recommend one book to anyone contemplating moving to rural Ohio, it would be “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons.  It’s where I learned to wash dishes with a twig.

“Brand new,” of course, means “completely new, unused,” and has been in constant use since at least the late 16th century.  The “brand” in “brand-new” (the hyphenated original form) is “brand” in its Old English sense of “burning piece of wood” or, more generally, “fire.”  Something that is “brand new” is as new as if it had just emerged from the fire of a forge (e.g., a sword) or kiln (pottery, etc.).  Shakespeare expressed the same concept in his use of the similar phrase “fire-new.”  The use of “brand” to mean “proprietary name for one’s product” in the “Coke” sense is a later use of “brand,” most likely taken from the vintners’ practice of marking wooden wine casks with an iron “brand” heated in a fire.

The spelling “bran-new” might seem like a recent mutation, but it’s actually been fairly common since about 1714, cropping up in both Dickens and Twain.  This spelling seems to be a case of “folk etymology,” in which an unfamiliar element (“brand”) is replaced by a more familiar one (‘bran”).  A similar process transformed “buttonhold” (originally a loop of string) into “buttonhole.”  The fact that the “d” in “brand new” is usually not pronounced probably added to the evolution of “bran-new.”

Ironically, the fact that “brand” has become a far more common word in the past hundred years has short-circuited this process of modification, and made “bran-new” less acceptable than it once was.  E.M. Delafield got away with it in 1930, but it would be hard to find an editor or teacher today who did not consider “bran-new” an error.