English · Idiom Attested

cook the books

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Fraudulently alter records.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Thao túng hồ sơ một cách gian dối

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

When it came to cooking the books, Dennis was in the Raymond Blanc class.

‘ Michael was cooking the books.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Figurative class: Euphemism (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Common questions

What does “cook the books” mean?

Fraudulently alter records.

Is “cook the books” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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