Cockfight

To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, "Prithee," said Cleomenes, "give me cocks that will kill fighting."

A cockfight is a blood sport between two roosters (cocks), or more accurately gamecocks, held in a ring called a cockpit.

Quotes

• I didn't see it, but it sounds barbaric. It's become like cock-fighting: poor dumb brutes being set upon each other by conniving television producers.
  • Boris Johnson, reported in David Smith, "Focus: Big Brother brawl", Observer, 20 June 2004, p. 17; referring to the TV series, Big Brother.

• Cock-fighting must be considered a barbarous diversion.
  • Lord Ellenborough, Squires v. Whisken (1811), 3 Camp. Rep. 141; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 30.

• Cockfighting has always been my idea of a great sport— two armed entrées battling to see who'll be dinner.
  • P. J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell (1989).

• To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, "Prithee," said Cleomenes, "give me cocks that will kill fighting."
  • Plutarch, 61 Cleomenes.

• Trade hardly deems the busy day begun
  Till his keen eye along the sheet has run;
  The blooming daughter throws her needle by,
  And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh;
  While the grave mother puts her glasses on,
  And gives a tear to some old crony gone.
  The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down
  To know what last new folly fills the town;
  Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things,
  The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings.
  • Charles Sprague, Curiosity.