- cook (n.)
- O.E. coc, from V.L. cocus "cook," from L. coquus, from coquere "to cook, prepare food, ripen, digest, turn over in the mind" from PIE base *pekw- "to cook" (cf. Oscan popina "kitchen," Skt. pakvah "cooked," Gk. peptein, Lith. kepti "to bake, roast," O.C.S. pecenu "roasted"). The noun was first; Gmc. languages had no one native term for all types of cooking. The verb is first attested late 14c.; the figurative sense of "to manipulate, falsify, doctor" is from 1630s. To cook with gas is 1930s jive talk.
"There is the proverb, the more cooks the worse potage." [Gascoigne, 1575]
Related: Cooker (a type of stove, 1884); cookery (1390s); cooking (1640s).