cooked
/kookt/adjective
Meaning
Used informally to say that a person, plan, team, or situation is finished, defeated, or likely to suffer a bad outcome. Cooked can also mean exhausted or mentally spent, depending on context.[2]
- 1. Doomed, ruined, or in serious trouble: If the evidence is that bad, you’re cooked.
- 2. Defeated, exposed, or unable to recover: The team was cooked after giving up four goals in ten minutes.
- 3. Extremely tired, drained, or mentally finished: I’m cooked after that exam.
Examples
“Missed the deadline? Yeah, you're cooked.”
“Chat, are we cooked?”
“I studied for eight hours. My brain is cooked.”
“The Wi-Fi died during the final round—we're cooked.”
“Once the screenshots dropped, he was cooked.”
Origin and spread
Cooked is not a newly invented internet word. Merriam-Webster documents the figurative sense “done for, finished” in English by 1848 and describes current online usage as a continuation of that meaning, with newer conversational patterns such as “chat, are we cooked?” The expression became highly visible in social-media and texting contexts during the 2020s; a 2026 Associated Press report quotes a college student describing it as meaning “give it up, it’s over.” Earlier uses also include a separate sense meaning exhausted or drunk, so those meanings should not automatically be treated as the source of the modern doom-oriented usage.
How to use it
Cooked is casual, emphatic, and often humorous or resigned rather than genuinely dramatic. “I’m cooked” may mean anything from “I’m in real trouble” to “I’m too tired to function,” so the situation supplies the meaning. The word is common in online comments, group chats, gaming talk, and youth-oriented speech, but it can sound forced in formal settings or when used by someone unfamiliar with the register.
