The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cockfight \Cock"fight`\, n. A match or contest of gamecocks.
Wiktionary
n. A contest, in a cockpit, between gamecocks fitted with cockspurs vb. To participate in (as a rooster), or organize and run (as a gambler or bookie), a cockfighting event.
WordNet
n. a match in a cockpit between two fighting cocks heeled with metal gaffs
Wikipedia
A cockfight is a blood sport between two roosters (cocks), or more accurately gamecocks, held in a ring called a cockpit. The history of raising fowl for fighting goes back 6,000 years. The first documented use of the word gamecock, denoting use of the cock as to a “ game”, a sport, pastime or entertainment, was recorded in 1646, after the term “cock of the game” used by George Wilson, in the earliest known book on the sport of cockfighting in The Commendation of Cocks and Cock Fighting in 1607. But it was during Magellan's voyage of discovery of the Philippines in 1521 when modern cockfighting was first witnessed and documented by Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's chronicler, in the kingdom of Taytay.
The combatants, referred to as gamecocks, are specially bred birds, conditioned for increased stamina and strength. The comb and wattle are cut off in order to meet show standards of the American Gamefowl Society and the Old English Game Club and to prevent freezing in colder climates (the standard emerged from the older practice of severing the comb, wattles, and earlobes of the bird in order to remove anatomical vulnerabilities, similar to the practice of docking a dog's tail and ears).
Cocks possess congenital aggression toward all males of the same species. Cocks are given the best of care until near the age of two years. They are conditioned, much like professional athletes prior to events or shows. Wagers are often made on the outcome of the match.
Cockfighting is a blood sport due in some part to the physical trauma the cocks inflict on each other, which is sometimes increased for entertainment purposes by attaching metal spurs to the cocks' natural spurs. While not all fights are to the death, the cocks may endure significant physical trauma. In some areas around the world, cockfighting is still practiced as a mainstream event; in some countries it is regulated by law, or forbidden outright. Advocates of the "age old sport" often list cultural and religious relevance as reasons for perpetuation of cockfighting as a sport.
Usage examples of "cockfight".
Yelling obscenities, as at a bearbaiting or cockfight, the men spurred on the clandestine activity taking place.
American savages, they might as well bring back some decent English sports like bearbaiting and cockfights.
Some cities prefer the traditional cruelties of bearbaiting or cockfights, while others indulge their baser appetites with gladiators and arenas.
Cliff, this means attendance at mills, bearbaitings, cockfights, and visits to any gaming hell where green-as-grass country bumpkins can be assured mat they will leave the establishment with empty pockets.
I wanted to drive deep into the Atchafalaya Swamp, past the confines of reason, into the past, into a world of lost dialects, gator hunters, busthead whiskey, moss harvesters, Jax beer, trotline runners, moonshiners, muskrat trappers, cockfights, bloodred boudin, a jigger of Jim Beam lowered into a frosted schooner of draft, outlaw shrimpers, dirty rice black from the pot, hogmeat cooked in rum, Pearl and Regal and Grand Prize and Lone Star iced down in washtubs, crawfish boiled with cob corn and artichokes, all of it on the tree-flooded, alluvial rim of the world, where the tides and the course of the sun were the only measures of time.
He watched them betting on cockfights, watched them losing their money because the prize birds had been fed rum-soaked raisins, and he pretended that he would rather be with them than with anyone else.
Hogg had a confused image of the Moorish Empire: dirty men in robes, kasbahs without modern sanitation, heartening smells of things the sun had got at, muezzins, cockfights, shady men in unshaven hiding, the waves slapping naughty naughty at boats full of contraband goods.
Through the door, the scene looked smaller, like a cockfight, betters hanging over a pit, some glum, some screaming till their neck cords popped.
Otherwise a cockfight is about as thrilling as a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon.
Robert Ingersoll once said that the genial climate of California would in a fairly brief time evolve a race resembling the Mexicans, and that in two or three generations the Californians would be seen of a Sunday morning on their way to a cockfight with a rooster under each arm.
The seamen on the deck left their tasks even those on the handles of the pumps and came running to form a ring around the swordsmen as though they watched a cockfight, their faces alight with the prospect of seeing blood spurt.
The rough seamen who watched might have bayed and bellowed at the spectacle of a bull-baiting or a cockfight, but even they had fallen silent, awed by the terrible tragedy they saw unfolding.
Cockfights, dogfights, coon-on-a-log, duels, stallion fights, bullfights.
Summoning his limo, he had departed between the mini-riot that had broken out during a police raid on a Hialeah cockfight and the high-speed pursuit of three carloads of teenage smash-and-grabbers across the Broad Causeway from Bal Harbour.
He paid unblushing court to Miss Taverner, was kind to Miss Fairford, quizzed his aunt and cousin, took Peregrine secretly over to a dingy tavern in the nearest town to witness a cockfight, and was voted in less than no time to be a most amiable young man.