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Cook one's goose

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Cook one's goose: to ruin someone's plans or prospects irreparably; the domestic cooking image transforms the goose — a valuable asset — into something finished and consumed.

Detailed Definition
Cook one's goose means to ruin someone’s chances, bring about their downfall, or cause a plan to fail, often through one’s own actions. In poetry, its comic strangeness can sharpen satire, dramatic irony, or moral fable. The idiom may suit a boastful speaker whose schemes collapse, a villain undone by overconfidence, or a lover who destroys trust. Because it has a proverbial, slightly old-fashioned flavour, it can add humour while still pointing to serious consequences such as regret, exposure, and self-sabotage.
Example
Example in poetry:
A comic poem might say the boastful trickster cooked his goose by telling one lie too many; In a moral poem, cook one's goose can mark the moment folly becomes ruin; The phrase suits stories where a character causes their own downfall; A satirical poet could use it when arrogance destroys a scheme.
Additional Notes
To cook one’s goose means ruin one’s chances or bring about one’s downfall. The idiom has a comic, domestic flavour, which can soften or sharpen disaster depending on tone. In poetry it can suit satire, folk narrative, or dramatic monologue where a character recognises too late that events have turned against them. The cooked bird image also hints at irreversibility.
Also Known As
ruin chances
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