English · Proverb Candidate

too many cooks spoil the broth

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Also seen as: too many cooks spoil the stew · too many cooks spoil the soup · too many chefs spoil the broth

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Too many people involved can ruin a project or activity

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Quá nhiều người tham gia có thể làm hỏng dự án hoặc hoạt động

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: multiple cooks over-seasoning or messing up a broth

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Too many Cooks did not spoil the travellers ' broth and by the end of the nineteenth century Cooks had offices across Europe and America, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, the Middle East and India.

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

Sources & notes

Listed on Wikipedia “List of proverbial phrases” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Equivalents & related

Near equivalent lắm thầy thối ma Taking advice from too many people ruins the outcome — conflicting guidance confuses everything. Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “too many cooks spoil the broth” mean?

Too many people involved can ruin a project or activity Literally: multiple cooks over-seasoning or messing up a broth

Is “too many cooks spoil the broth” formal or informal?

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

What is the closest equivalent?

“lắm thầy thối ma” (Tiếng Việt) — near equivalent.