cook.
A person who prepares food.
Meaning & usage
A person who prepares food.
I'm a terrible cook, so I eat a lot of frozen dinners.
The head cook of a manor house.
The degree or quality of cookedness of food.
The member of a hot-rivetting team who heats the rivets in a brazier, see rivet.
One who manufactures certain illegal drugs, especially meth.
Police found two meth cooks working in the illicit lab.
A session of manufacturing certain illegal drugs, especially meth.
A fish, the European striped wrasse, Labrus mixtus.
An unintended solution to a chess problem, considered to spoil the problem.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *pékʷeti Proto-Italic *kʷekʷō Latin *quoquō Latin coquō Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Italic *-os Archaic 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 (“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”).
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.
He's in the kitchen, cooking.
To apply heat to food in the course of preparing it, particularly in a way that transforms it rather than simply making it warmer.
To undergo cooking.
The dinner is cooking on the stove.
To smelt.
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.
To kill, destroy, or otherwise render useless or inoperative through exposure to excessive heat or radiation.
To execute by electric chair.
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.
To concoct or prepare.
My brother was locked up for cooking meth in his basement.
Jesse, we need to cook.
To tamper with or alter; to cook up.
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!
To play music vigorously.
On the Wagner piece, the orchestra was cooking!
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?
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). To proceed with some advantageous course of action; (more generally) to be successful.
We had to deal with some problems at first, but now we're cooking.
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). To develop insane or fringe ideas.
The furlough of workers during The Lockdowns left many with a conspiracy bent ample time to cook.
To defeat or humiliate.
He didn't prepare for the debate at all, so his opponent cooked him hard.
You didn't have to cook him like that!
To cause to be cooked, i.e. to put in a hopeless situation.
This new labor law is really cooking working-class people.
This assignment is cooking me big time.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *pékʷeti Proto-Italic *kʷekʷō Latin *quoquō Latin coquō Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Italic *-os Archaic 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.
To make the noise of the cuckoo.
Where this word comes from
Imitative.
To throw.
Where this word comes from
Unknown; possibly related to chuck.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.