Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also cook someone’s hash) to kill; thus one’s goose/hash is cooked, one is dying; cooked goose, one who is doomed.

1843		W.T. Moncrieff Scamps of London III ii: Your goose is supposed to be cooked.
1849		Chester Chron. 16 Nov. 3/3: My wife called me out of the room [...] for she wanted to get him into the kitchen ‘to cook his goose’.
1850		North Wales Chron. 29 Jan. 3/3: [C]ertain butchers [...] labouring in their vocation, were in the act of ‘cooking his goose,’ to use a slang phrase, for a sturdy and as it turned out stubborn [...] Ox.
1861		Trollope Framley Parsonage (1866) 415: Chaldicotes [...] is a cooked goose.
1862		T. Ramsay ‘Cookshop Man’ in Prince of Wales’ Own Song Book 71: But now we have a law in use To let us cook each other’s goose.
1866		Wild Boys of London I 149/1: I’ve cooked his goose, I think.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1880		Besant & Rice Seamy Side II 258: Leaving his coat behind him too [...] to prove that his goose was already cooked, and his bucket kicked.
1892		H. Nisbet Bushranger’s Sweetheart 306: Leave me, for my goose is cooked.
1917		in J.R. McConnell Flying for France 134: I was skimming ground at a hundred miles an hour and heading for the trees. I saw soldiers running to be in at the finish and I thought to myself that James’s hash was cooked.
1927		(con. 1914–18) L. Nason Three Lights from a Match 290: The goose is cooked now! Come on! Let’s beat it.
1935		J. Conroy World to Win 40: My daddy’ll cook your goose!
1947		S.J. Perelman ‘Pale Hands I Loathe’ in Keep It Crisp 72: O.K., Carlson, your goose is cooked.
1948		N. Nye Breed of the Chaparral (1949) 108: You’re a cooked goose, boy.
1982		R. Dahl Revolting Rhymes n.p.: She yelled, ‘I’m going to scrag that child! / I’ll cook her flaming goose! I’ll skin ’er!’.
2001		S. King Dreamcatcher 230: We might say ‘Our goose is cooked’.

2. (also cook someone’s gosling, ...gruel, do someone’s goose) to spoil someone’s chances.

1843		W.T. Moncrieff Scamps of London I iii: I’ll cook their goose for them before I’ve done, or my name ain’t Bob.
1846		Censor (London) 25 Jan. 5/2: I am kilt by that Gutter Commissioner. But I’ll yet cook his gosling! The spalpeen.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 7 Feb. 2/7: He requested the policeman not to buff too strongly against him [...] ‘I am afraid you will cook my goose’.
1857		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1982) III 346: Gig-lamps, you’re the boy to cook Fosbrooke’s goose.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 50/1: Sometimes the blinds is all drawed down, on account of the sun, and that cooks our goose.
1867		‘Johnny Cross’ ‘Me And Matilda Jane’ in Orig. Pontoon Songster 34: One darkey he got jealous, and challenged me a duel, / And for the sake of ’Tilda Jane, I quickly cooked his gruel.
1871		Galveston News cited in Schele de Vere (1872) 581: The crowd then gave a specimen of calumny broke loose, / And said I’d snatched him baldheaded, and likewise cooked his goose.
1874		‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter II 21: ‘It is no go with her; that cad Thornhill [...] has cooked my goose in that quarter’.
1881		Newcastle Courant 16 Sept. 6/5: Such a man ‘cooked Sam’s goose for him’.
1887		Dallas Dly Herald (TX) 9 Feb. 2/1: He will carry New York and be our next president. ‘Rum, Romanism and Rebellion’ cooked his goose before.
1889		‘Penal Servitude for Mrs. Maybrick’ in Henderson Victorian Street Ballads (1937) 49: Then came the fatal letter that fairly cooked her goose.
1892		‘Tommy and his Sister Jane’ in ‘F. Anstey’ Mr Punch’s Model Music Hall 152: No peace of mind I e’er shall know again / Till I have cooked the geese of Tom and Jane!
1901		Marvel XV:376 Jan. 10: Ha! ha! that cooks their goose for ’em! she obeyed her papa, but Miss Cain insisted on being married, and Tommy forthwith insured her life for £6000 and began dieting her on antimony.
1901		Courier (Lincoln, NE) 24 Aug. 9/2: That word ‘hysteric’ cooked his goose.
1910		Morgan Co. Republican (Versailles, MO) 7 July 1/4: Cornet Brand [...] was cutting quite a swath with the Stover beauties until Mrs Noyes arrived, but that cooked his goose.
1912		D. Lowrie My Life in Prison 383: The next time I go to town I’ll cook his goose.
c.1916		Daily Liar 1/4: His goose will be well done / By our Kitchener.
1918		Williston Graphic (ND) 30 May n.p.: We had cooked his goose, and our ruse had worked.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 605: A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly, [...] highly likely to carve his way way to fame, which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the gospel as a whole [...] very effectively cooked his matrimonial goose.
1937		W.M. Raine Cool Customer 16: Let the folks he has ruined cook his goose for him, I say.
1949		F. Brown Dead Ringer 58: I’d sure cooked my own goose with her.
1955		J.P. Donleavy Ginger Man (1958) 155: Please, God, don’t let Skully meet Marion or my goose will be cooked beyond recognition.
1964		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 91: I told John I would get that rat if it’s the last thing I do. / But the chump had left town because he knew his goose was cooked.
1970		A. Sillitoe Start in Life (1979) 183: You’ve cooked your goose. I can’t have my chauffeur messing with my girlfriend. You can get out.
1975		S. Selvon Moses Ascending (1984) 136: Bah [...] I got enough on you to cxook your goose.
1992		D. Burke Street Talk 2 74: If she spots me here, my goose is cooked.

3. to give someone their due deserts.

1841		Blackwood’s Mag. Apr. 498/2: If my wife had kept company with a life-guardsman under my nose, don't you imagine I would have cooked his goose.
1845		Era (London) 26 Jan. 10/3: The hitting was rather in favour of Smith; a struggle for the fall; both down, Tom under (the shouts of ‘That’s the way to cook his goose,’ from Weston’s corner, was almost defening).
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 227/2: If they come here we’ll cook their goose, / The pope and Cardinal Wiseman.
1870		C.G. Leland ‘First Edition of Breitmann’ in Hans Breitmann in Church 129: Denn ofer all de shapel / Vierce war vas ragin loose; / Fool many a vighten brinter / Got well ge-cooked his goose.
1906		‘O. Henry’ ‘Caliph, Cupid and the Clock’ in Four Million (1915) 193: I ought to have known at 8.31 that my goose was cooked.
1916		J. Buchan Greenmantle (1930) 291: If Rasta had got you, or the Germans had had the job of lifting you, your goose would have been jolly well cooked.
1927		(con. 1920s) S. Lewis Elmer Gantry 469: Oh, maybe that publicity won’t cook your reverend goose.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 312: Convinced that he had cooked the Shillingsworth’s goose.
1940		W.R. Burnett High Sierra in Four Novels (1984) 437: I know when my goose is cooked.
1950		A. Buckeridge Jennings Goes To School 184: Knowing glances that plainly said that that had cooked Mr. Wilkins’ goose for him.
a.1964		‘Honky-Tonk Bud’ in D. Wepman et al. Life (1976) 56: He said, ‘What’s the use, I’ve cooked my goose,’ / And gave himself up to the man.
1978		P. Theroux Picture Palace 260: I could have told them the Japanese were planning to cook our goose.
1986		E. Weiner Howard the Duck 118: We’re gonna cook this sucker’s goose!
2015		S. King Finders Keepers (2016) 58: If you have those notebooks when the knock on your door, your goose will be cooked.