cook

To prepare food for eating by heating it, often combining with other ingredients.

Noun

  1. A person who prepares food.
    • I'm a terrible cook, so I eat a lot of frozen dinners.

    Synonyms: cooker

    Coordinate Terms: chef cookess cookeress culinary artist line cook magirist magirologist prep cook sous-chef

  2. The head cook of a manor house.

    Coordinate Terms: kitchenmaid scullery maid

  3. The degree or quality of cookedness of food.
  4. The member of a hot-rivetting team who heats the rivets in a brazier, see rivet.
  5. One who manufactures certain illegal drugs, especially meth.
    • Police found two meth cooks working in the illicit lab.
    • By late October, the pressure on the Dark Arrows' ecstasy cook had eased. Other suppliers had moved in with product. - 2008, Mel Bradshaw, Victim Impact:
    • Owsley Stanley was a pioneer LSD cook, and the Purple Owsley pill from his now-defunct lab was Dad's prized possession, a rare, potent, druggie collector's item, the alleged inspiration for the Hendrix song “Purple...
  6. A session of manufacturing certain illegal drugs, especially meth.
    • Punko told Plante he wanted to use a full barrel for the next cook. - 2011, Neal Hall, Hell To Pay: Hells Angels vs. The Million-Dollar Rat, page 36:
  7. A fish, the European striped wrasse, Labrus mixtus.
  8. An unintended solution to a chess problem, considered to spoil the problem.
    • The original endgame was one file to the right (Kf1, Kb5 etc.). But there is a cook after 1. c6 dxc6 2. d6 cxd6 3. h4 gxh3 e.p. 4. gxh3 Ka4! 5. h4 b5. My version eliminates the cook. - 2003 June, Pal Benko, “Endgame...

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *pékʷeti Proto-Italic *kʷekʷō Latin coquō Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Italic *-os Old Latin -os Latin -us Latin coquus Vulgar Latin *cocusbor. Old English cōc Middle English cook English cook From Middle English cook, from Old English cōc (“a cook”), from Latin cocus, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- (“to cook, become ripe”). Cognates Cognate with Cimbrian khoch (“cook”), Dutch kok (“cook”), German Koch (“cook”), Luxembourgish Kach (“cook”), Danish kok (“cook”), Icelandic kokkur (“cook”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk kokk (“cook”), Swedish kock (“cook”). Also compare Proto-West Germanic *kokōn (“to cook”) (whence North Frisian kööge, kööki (“to cook, boil”), West Frisian koaitsje...

Forms

cooks

Derived

autocook chief cook and bottle-washer chief cook and bottle washer cold cook cook book cookbook cook car cookdom cookee cookery cookfire cookhouse cookie cookish cookless cookline cookmaid cook-off cookout cook pot cookpot cookroom cookset cookshack

Verb Entry 2

  1. To prepare food for eating by heating it, often combining with other ingredients.
    • I'm cooking bangers and mash.
    • He's in the kitchen, cooking.
    • You could just use ordinary shop-bought kecap manis to marinade the meat, but making your own is easy, has a far more elegant fragrance and is, above all, such a great brag! Flavouring kecap manis is an intensely...
  2. To smelt.
    • Your suggestion makes sense. You cook iron with coal to get... iron. The coal is expended, where does it go? inside the iron to turn it into steel in real life. I approve - 2011 February 10, Oventoaster, “Iron items to...
  3. To be cooked.
    • The dinner is cooking on the stove.
  4. To be uncomfortably hot.
    • Look at that poor dog shut up in that car on a day like today - it must be cooking in there.

    Synonyms: bake stew

  5. To kill, destroy, or otherwise render useless or inoperative through exposure to excessive heat or radiation.
    • You would die from what we might call "extremely acute radiation poisoning" – that is, you would be cooked. - 2014, Randall Munroe, “Periodic Wall of the Elements”, in What If?, New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin...
    • "What's coming?" "Dunno yet. Cindy! Active scanning! Pulse hard, but don't cook any friendlies." "We have sensors that can cook people?" "Another reason why warship combat is not an indoor sport." - 2017 July 6, Howard...
  6. To execute by electric chair.

    Synonyms: fry

  7. To hold on to a grenade briefly after igniting the fuse, so that it explodes almost immediately after being thrown.
    • I always cook my frags, in case they try to grab one and throw it back.

    Synonyms: cook off

  8. To concoct or prepare.
    • My brother was locked up for cooking meth in his basement.
    • Jesse, we need to cook.
    • The process of cooking meth can leave residue on surfaces all over the home, exposing all of its occupants to the drug. - 2006, Frank Spalding, Methamphetamine: The Dangers of Crystal Meth, page 47:
  9. To tamper with or alter; to cook up.
    • They all of them receive the same advices from abroad, and very often in the same words; but their way of cooking it is so different, that there is no citizen, who has an eye to the public good, who can leave the...
    • So far as Pridger was concerned the game was up. He had cooked the buying, he had cooked the selling, he had systematically pillaged the stock. - 1927, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados Mysteries:
  10. To play or improvise in an inspired and rhythmically exciting way. (From 1930s jive talk.)
    • Watch this band: they cook!
    • Crank up the Coltrane and start cooking!
    • This album is called Cookin’ at Miles’ request. He said, “After all, that’s what we did – came in and cooked.” - 1957, Miles Davis quoted by Ira Gitler, liner notes to Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, Prestige LP...
  11. To play music vigorously.
    • On the Wagner piece, the orchestra was cooking!
    • The tempos were swift. The orchestra cooked, reading [conductor] Kahane's mind and swinging with him as one. - 2012, “Review: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra won't stand still”, in Los Angeles Times:
  12. To proceed with some plan or course of action, or develop some train of thought towards its conclusion (whether this is advantageous, or comical, or digging into a hole).
    • Hol' up, let that boy cook!
    • OK, who let him cook?

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *pékʷeti Proto-Italic *kʷekʷō Latin coquō Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Italic *-os Old Latin -os Latin -us Latin coquus Vulgar Latin *cocusbor. Old English cōc Middle English cook Middle English coken English cook From Middle English coken, from the noun cook. In the slang sense of "proceed with some plan", coined by American rapper from California Lil B in 2010 and popularized in viral tweets and TikToks in mid-2022.

Forms

cooks cooking cooked cooken no-table-tags glossary cook cookest cookedst cooketh -

Synonyms

cook do

Hypernyms

concoct contrive devise make up plan prepare

Hyponyms

Troponyms bake barbecue blanch boil braise broil fry grill microwave parbake parboil parcook parfry poach roast scald seethe simmer steam stew toast

Related

mageiricophobia concoct scramble food cookware

Derived

cookability cookable cookaholic cook back cook-chill cook-chilled cook-chilling cooker cooking cooking apple cooking box cooking lager cooking on gas cooking plate cooking pot cooking-pot cooking sherry cooking show cooking soda cooking spray cooking torch cooking utensil cooking with gas cook out

Verb intransitive, obsolete

  1. To make the noise of the cuckoo.
    • Constant cuckoos cook on every side. - 1599, Thomas Moffet, The Silkwormes, and their Flies, London: V.S. for Nicholas Ling, →OCLC:

Origin

Imitative.

Forms

cooks cooking cooked

Synonyms

cook do

Hypernyms

prepare

Hyponyms

bake barbecue blanch boil braise broil fry grill microwave parbake parboil parcook parfry poach roast scald seethe simmer steam stew toast

Related

concoct scramble food cookware

Verb UK, dialectal

  1. To throw.
    • Cook. To throw. Cook me that ball, throw me that ball. Glou. - 1787, Francis Grose, A Provincial Glossary: With a Collection of Local Proverbs, and Popular Superstitions, London: Printed for S. Hooper, →OCLC, page 37:

    Synonyms: fling hurl bung cast chuck chunk cook dash dump feck jerk heave hield hoy huck hurtle launch lob peck peg pick pitch precipitate project

Origin

Unknown; possibly related to chuck.

Forms

cooks cooking cooked

Synonyms

cook do

Hypernyms

prepare

Hyponyms

bake barbecue blanch boil braise broil fry grill microwave parbake parboil parcook parfry poach roast scald seethe simmer steam stew toast

Related

concoct scramble food cookware