Meaning & use
cook
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Meanings
verbtransitive or intransitive
To prepare food by heating it, for example by boiling, baking or frying.
Grammar: Takes an object (cook dinner) or none (she cooks every day; the rice is cooking).
Patterns
- cook something
- cook for someone
- cook something for someone
He cooks dinner for the whole family on Sundays.
The pasta needs to cook for ten minutes.
I don't cook much when I work late.
nouncountable
A person who prepares food, either as a job or at home.
Grammar: Countable: a good cook, the cook at a school.
Patterns
- a good cook
- the cook at somewhere
My grandmother was a wonderful cook.
The camp hired a cook for the summer.
Our school cook makes soup every Friday.
verbtransitiveinformal
To change figures or records dishonestly so that they show something false.
Grammar: Takes an object, usually in cook the books: cook the figures.
Patterns
- cook the books
- cook the figures
The manager was caught cooking the books to hide the losses.
Investigators found that someone had cooked the accounts.
He cooked the results so the experiment would look successful.
verbphrasal verbinformal
To make or plan something in a secret or devious way, often with up.
Grammar: Used as cook up, with an object: cook up a story.
Patterns
- cook something up
The twins cooked up a plan to surprise their mother.
She cooked up a clever excuse for being late.
They cooked up a scheme to sell old furniture online.
Word forms
| third person singular | cooks |
|---|---|
| past tense | cooked |
| past participle | cooked |
| -ing form | cooking |
| plural | cooks |
Common combinations
- cook dinner
- I'll cook dinner tonight if you wash up.
- cook slowly
- The stew should cook slowly for three hours.
- cook from scratch
- She cooks everything from scratch.
- cook the books
- The accountant went to prison for cooking the books.
- a good cook
- He is a good cook and loves to host.
- cook up
- They cooked up a story to explain the missing cake.
Synonyms and how they differ
- prepare
- Prepare is broader and includes tasks like chopping or mixing without heat, while cook always involves heat.
- chef
- A chef is a trained professional who often leads a kitchen, while a cook can be anyone who makes food.
- bake
- Bake means to cook in an oven specifically, while cook is general.
- fabricate
- Fabricate is the formal word for inventing false information, while cook up is chattier and can sound playful.
Word family
Commonly confused: cook or cooker? cook or cock?
cook vs cooker
A cooker is an appliance, mainly British, while a cook is a person.
cook vs cock
Cock is a male chicken, and also sounds similar to cook, but the two words have unrelated meanings.
Practice
The accountant went to prison because he had ______ the books to hide the company's losses.
Choose one answer.
Cook the books is the fixed idiom for falsifying records. Baked, stewed and boiled are real cooking verbs but do not fit the idiom.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “cook”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.