Meanings
present singular third person cooks the books · participle present cooking the books · participle past cooked the books · past cooked the books
- idiomaticTo manipulate accounting information, especially illegally.
Enron Corp., once a major U.S. corporation, is now famous for cooking the books.
- broadlyidiomaticTo falsify an account of an event.
Those that cooked the books and presented them with bias minds; They sugar-coated the stories; and twisted and exaggerated events
2012, R.I. Iyemere, The Ordeals: Poems in Memory of Ada-Emilia Valmori, →ISBN, page 1462 more examples
Two years after he received his piece of the Nobel Prize, Mann was drawn into controversy over a series of e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom that some climate change skeptics charged provided proof that Mann and his fellow scientists were cooking the books on climate, though for what reason, the skeptics never made clear.
2015, Seamus McGraw, Betting the Farm on a Drought, →ISBNOne does suspect that the authors of Numbers cooked the books a bit to make the more important and respected tribes (Judah, for instance) look good with higher population numbers.
2017, Stephen Warde Anderson, The Anderson Revisionist Bible: The Books of Moses, →ISBN, page 280
Origin
From the mid-17th century. A metaphor based on cooking, whereby ingredients are changed, altered and improved. Thus financial statements can also be so modified to the benefit of the "cook".
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Chinese Mandarin 做假帳 /做假帐, 弄虛作假 /弄虚作假
- 做假帳 /做假帐 (zuò jiǎzhàng)manipulate accounting information
- 弄虛作假 /弄虚作假 (nòngxūzuòjiǎ)falsify an account of an event
Finnish harjoittaa luovaa kirjanpitoa, kaunistella
- harjoittaa luovaa kirjanpitoamanipulate accounting information
- kaunistellafalsify an account of an event
- vääristelläfalsify an account of an event
- väärentääfalsify an account of an event
Greek μαγειρεύω τα βιβλία
- μαγειρεύω τα βιβλία (mageirévo ta vivlía)manipulate accounting information
Japanese 改竄する
- 改竄する (kaizan suru)manipulate accounting information
Norwegian Bokmål forfalske regnskapet
- forfalske regnskapetmanipulate accounting information
Portuguese manipular a contabilidade, fraudar a contabilidade
- manipular a contabilidademanipulate accounting information
- fraudar a contabilidademanipulate accounting information
- falsificarfalsify an account of an event
- adulterarfalsify an account of an event
- manipularfalsify an account of an event
Russian фальсифици́ровать фина́нсовую отчётность, сфальсифици́ровать фина́нсовую отчётность
- фальсифици́ровать фина́нсовую отчётность (falʹsificírovatʹ finánsovuju otčótnostʹ)manipulate accounting information
- сфальсифици́ровать фина́нсовую отчётность (sfalʹsificírovatʹ finánsovuju otčótnostʹ)manipulate accounting information
Cite this entry
cook the books. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cook%20the%20books
“cook the books.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cook%20the%20books. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cook the books,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cook%20the%20books.
Source: cook the books on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.