Phrase guide

cook someone's goose

verb · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

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Received-Pronunciation: /ˈkʊk ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈɡuːs/
Southern-England: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
General-American: /ˈkʊk ˌsʌmwʌnz ˈɡus/

verb

Meaning 1

To spoil one's plans or hope of success.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: idiomatic, informal

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: do someone's goose, drive a coach and horses through, upset the applecart, ball up, blight, bumble, botch, bugger up, bungle, contaminate, corrupt, crab, deprave, disrupt, disturb, foil, fuck up, jack up, mar, mess up, mishandle, mommick, pollute, put a crimp in, queer, ruin, screw up, soil, sour, spoil, stain, undo, upset, turn upside down, vitiate

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

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

Across languages

Translations

9 source translations are retained for this English entry.

German: die Suppe versalzen — to spoil one's plans or hope of success
Hungarian: keresztülhúzza a számításait — to spoil one's plans or hope of success
Hungarian: keresztbe tesz neki — to spoil one's plans or hope of success
Hungarian: bajt hoz rá — to spoil one's plans or hope of success
Italian: conciare per le feste — to spoil one's plans or hope of success
Italian: scompigliare i piani — to spoil one's plans or hope of success
Serbo-Croatian: pomrsiti konce — to spoil one's plans or hope of success
Serbo-Croatian: pokvariti račune — to spoil one's plans or hope of success
Welsh: troi'r drol — to spoil one's plans or hope of success

Word forms

Inflections and variants

cooks someone's goose — present, singular, third-person
cooking someone's goose — participle, present
cooked someone's goose — participle, past
cooked someone's goose — past

Word family

Derived and related words

Derived: none provided

Related: cooked goose, 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

Spelling and sound

Hyphenation and homophones

Hyphenation: cook some·one's goose

Semantic map

Other relationships

Sources

Where this information comes from

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Changes made: Wiktionary markup was removed and matching senses were grouped; WordNet and CMUdict evidence was merged into the canonical word page. Source quotations with separate cited works are not republished.

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