Englishcook someone's goose
Meaning: To ruin someone's plans.
Example: “When the security footage turned up, it cooked his goose.”
Equivalents in other languages
Swedish: Nu har du satt din sista potatis Literally: Now you've planted your last potato
Origin: The story usually told about this one is almost certainly invented. It has a Swedish king — usually Eric — besieging a town whose defenders hung a goose from the walls to mock him, prompting him to threaten to cook it; no evidence supports the tale, and no version of it appears anywhere near the period the phrase actually emerges. The documented early appearance is far more ordinary and much later: an English street ballad of 1851, written against Cardinal Wiseman during the uproar over the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England, which threatened to cook the goose of the Pope and the Cardinal both. Behind it sits a simple and durable idea — a goose was a valuable bird kept for the future, so cooking someone's goose destroys the thing they were counting on.
More English idioms
- eat crow pie To humble oneself because one has been proved wrong.
- fat cat A rich but usually lazy person.
- fine kettle of fish A terrible mess.
- fly-by-night Undependable; untrustworthy.
- fly in the face of something To go against something; to show disrespect for something or someone.
- fly in the ointment An unpleasant element in an otherwise pleasant situation.
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