cook someone's goose

present singular third person cooks someone's goose · participle present cooking someone's goose · participle past cooked someone's goose · past cooked someone's goose

1. idiomaticinformalTo spoil one's plans or hope of success.

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

   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

   5 more examples

   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.

   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

   [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.]

   [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

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

   1921 September, John Galsworthy, “The Dark Tune”, in To Let, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, page 284

   "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]."

   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

   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!

   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

   Synonyms: do someone's goose, drive a coach and horses through, upset the applecart, ball up, blight, bumble, botch, bugger up