cook
/kʊk/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms cooks cooking cooked cooken cookest cookedst cooketh Cooke Coke
- noun (cooking) A person who prepares food. “I'm a terrible cook, so I eat a lot of frozen dinners.”
- noun (cooking) The head cook of a manor house.
- noun (cooking) The degree or quality of cookedness of food.
- noun (metalworking, construction) The member of a hot-rivetting team who heats the rivets in a brazier, see rivet.
- noun (slang) One who manufactures certain illegal drugs, especially meth. “Police found two meth cooks working in the illicit lab.”
- noun (slang) A session of manufacturing certain illegal drugs, especially meth.
- noun A fish, the European striped wrasse, Labrus mixtus.
- noun (chess) An unintended solution to a chess problem, considered to spoil the problem.
- verb (ambitransitive, generally) To prepare food for eating, typically by heating it, combining it with other ingredients, seasoning it, preparing it for serving, etc. “I'm cooking bangers and mash.”
- verb (transitive, specifically) To apply heat to food in the course of preparing it, particularly in a way that transforms it rather than simply making it warmer.
- verb (intransitive) To undergo cooking. “The dinner is cooking on the stove.”
- verb (transitive, video games) To smelt.
- verb (intransitive, figuratively) 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.”
- verb (transitive, slang) To kill, destroy, or otherwise render useless or inoperative through exposure to excessive heat or radiation.
- verb (transitive, slang) To execute by electric chair.
- verb (transitive, military slang) 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.”
- verb (obsolete, rare, intransitive) To make the noise of the cuckoo.
- verb (UK, dialect, obsolete) To throw.
- proper noun (countable) An English surname originating as an occupation for a cook or seller of cooked food. Famously held by James Cook, English captain and explorer of the Pacific Ocean, and for whom the Cook Islands, Cook Strait and Mount Cook were named.
- proper noun A township in Sac County, Iowa.
Synonyms
cooker bake stew fry cook off do fling hurl bung cast chuck chunk dash dump feck jerk heave hield hoy huck James Cook Captain Cook Captain James Cook fix ready make prepare fudge manipulate fake
Etymology
From Middle English cook, from Old English cōc (“a cook”), from Latin cocus, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- (“to cook, become ripe”).
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 (“to cook”), Cimbrian khochan, khòchan (“to cook”), Dutch koken (“to cook”), German kochen (“to cook”), Limburgish kaoke, kauche (“to cook”), Luxembourgish kachen (“to cook”), Vilamovian kocha, koha (“to cook”), Yiddish קאָכן (kokhn, “to cook”)), from Late Latin cocō (“to 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.
Imitative.
Unknown; possibly related to chuck.
Webster’s 1913
- verb To make the noise of the cuckoo. [Obs. or R.]
- verb To throw. [Prov.Eng.] "Cook me that ball." Grose.
- noun One whose occupation is to prepare food for the table; one who dresses or cooks meat or vegetables for eating.
- noun A fish, the European striped wrasse.
Etymology [Of imitative origin.]
Etymology [Etymol. unknown.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “cook”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details