# cooked

/ˈkʊkt/ (US) · /kˈʊkt/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/cooked
Updated: 2026-06-19

## Senses

### 2. ready to eat

adjective · CEFR A1

food that has been heated and is no longer raw.

For teachers: describing food that has undergone a cooking process and is ready for consumption.

- Is the chicken cooked all the way through yet?
- The recipe requires pre-cooked beetroot to save time during the final assembly of the salad.

### 3. in trouble or finished

adjective · CEFR B2 · Slang

in a very difficult situation where you are likely to fail or lose.

For teachers: predicative adjective indicating that a person or entity is in an irrecoverable state of failure or trouble.

- If the teacher finds out I copied his homework, I'm cooked.
- Once the scandal hit the front pages, the politician's career was effectively cooked, leaving him with no path to re-election.

### 4. exhausted

adjective · CEFR B2 · Informal

feeling extremely tired or having no energy left.

For teachers: physically or mentally depleted; synonymous with being 'burnt out' or 'pooped'.

- I've been working for twelve hours and I am absolutely cooked.
- After the triple-overtime match, the players looked completely cooked as they limped toward the locker rooms.

### 5. falsified

adjective · CEFR C1 · Informal

changed or faked to hide the truth, especially with money or numbers.

For teachers: referring to records or accounts that have been manipulated or falsified to deceive.

- The company went bankrupt after it was discovered they had cooked the books.
- The forensic auditors discovered a series of cooked entries in the ledger designed to inflate the quarterly earnings reports.

Usage: Commonly used in the phrase 'cooked the books'.

### 6. intoxicated

adjective · CEFR C1 · Slang · Dialect

being very drunk or under the influence of drugs.

For teachers: severely intoxicated by alcohol or narcotics; often implies a state of being visibly impaired.

- He looked totally cooked when he walked out of the club at 4:00 AM.
- The security guard refused them entry because they were clearly cooked and likely to cause a disturbance inside.

Teaching tip: This sense is particularly common in Australian and New Zealand English.

## Examples

- I stayed up all night studying and now I am cooked.
- After the manager found the errors in the financial report, the accountant knew his career at the firm was cooked.
- The team was already down by thirty points with only two minutes remaining, and the exhausted players looked completely cooked as they trudged back to the bench.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.