cook someone's goose

English

WOTD – 7 June 2020

Etymology

Various folk etymologies have been suggested, but the true etymology remains unknown.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkʊk ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈɡuːs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkʊk ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈɡus/
• Hyphenation: cook some‧one's goose

Verb

cook someone's goose (third-person singular simple present cooks someone's goose, present participle cooking someone's goose, simple past and past participle cooked someone's goose)

1. (idiomatic, informal) To spoil one's plans or hope of success.

   Synonyms: (rare) do someone's goose, drive a coach and horses through, upset the applecart; see also Thesaurus:spoil

   • 1867 September 28, Joseph Wasson, “Colonel [George] Crook’s Campaign”, in Peter Cozzens, editor, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865–1890: The Wars for the Pacific Northwest, volume 2, Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, published 2002, →ISBN, part 1 (The Snake-Paiute War and after, 1866–72), page 63:

     I like this Goose Lake country better than any I've seen east of the Cascade range, and if some mishap don't cook my goose, I hope to give you a good account of it, if not of myself.

   • [1918 May 2, John Terraine, quoting Frederick Scott Oliver, “The Gambler’s Fling”, in The Great War (Wordsworth Military Library), Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, published 1997, →ISBN, page 156:

     [W]hen is it reasonable to think that the Americans will be able to put in that immense army of three millions, fully equipped, each man with a hair mattress, a hot-water bottle, a gramophone, and a medicine chest, which they tell us will get to Berlin and ‘cook the goose’ of the Kaiser? [In a letter from F. S. Oliver to his brother.]]

   • 1921 September, John Galsworthy, “The Dark Tune”, in To Let, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, part III, page 284:

     A strange, awkward thought! Had Fleur cooked her own goose by trying to make too sure?

   • 1931, Anthony Gilbert [pseudonym; Lucy Beatrice Malleson], chapter 6, in The Case against Andrew Fane, London: W[illiam] Collins Sons & Co., →OCLC; republished London: The Murder Room, 2004, →ISBN, section 1:

     "Well," remarked Dobbie succinctly, "that rather cooks his goose, doesn't it?"

   • 1941 April 4, D[aniel] K. R. Crosswell, quoting Vivian Dykes, “Forging the Mold”, in Beetle: The Life of Walter Bedell Smith (American Warriors), Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, published 2010, →ISBN, part 3 (The Towering Figure—George C. Marshall), page 254:

     "I am afraid Bill [William Joseph Donovan] is rapidly cooking his own goose by lobbying," Dykes recorded on 4 April. "[Walter Bedell] Smith is getting completely fed up with [Donovan]."

   • 1943 October, Robert McCloskey, “The Case of the Sensational Scent”, in Homer Price, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC; republished New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, December 1966, →OCLC, page 18:

     Well I don't care if it's a thing or a mammal or a skunk, he can't sleep on our money. I'll cook that mammal's goose!

   • 1984, Donald Maddox, “Antipathiquelin and the Rhetoric of Torts”, in Semiotics of Deceit: The Pathelin Era […], Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press; Cranbury, N.J.; London: Associated University Presses, →ISBN, page 95:

     To express his antipathy, the lawyer manipulates the judicial process, its language and technicalities, to show that if he was formerly unprepared to serve Guillaume the promised feast, he is now eager to help him cook his own goose.

   • 1987, Sholem Aleichem [pseudonym; Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich], “[The Railway Stories] The Man from Buenos Aires”, in Hillel Halkin, transl., Tevye the Dairyman and The Railway Stories (Library of Yiddish Classics), New York, N.Y.: Schocken Books, →ISBN; republished New York, N.Y.: Schocken Books, [2008?], →ISBN, page 172:

     One false step can cook your goose for good. Before you know it, there's such a big stink that it's smeared all over the newspapers.

Related terms

• goose is cooked
• kill the goose that lays the golden eggs
• what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander
• wild-goose chase

Translations

to spoil one's plans or hope of success

• German: die Suppe versalzen (literally “to salt someone's soup”)
• Hungarian: keresztülhúzza a számításait, keresztbe tesz neki, bajt hoz rá
• Italian: conciare per le feste, scompigliare i piani
• Serbo-Croatian: pomrsiti konce (idiom), pokvariti račune (idiom)
• Welsh: troi'r drol (literally “to overturn the cart”)

Further reading

• “to cook (rarely do) one’s goose, phrase” under “goose, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1900.
• “cook someone's goose, phrase”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “goose”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.