In slang, cooked means done for, in serious trouble or past saving. Merriam-Webster defines it as describing someone or something in a state of possibly irreversible misfortune and hardship. 'We're cooked' means 'we're doomed'. It sounds new, but Merriam-Webster says cooked has meant 'done for, finished' since the middle of the 19th century.
If you've seen 'chat, are we cooked?' under a video, you've seen one of the internet's favourite ways to panic with a straight face. Cooked is dramatic, funny and very old. Here's what it means, how it's used now, the other things it can mean, and why it isn't the same as 'let him cook'.
Cooked: done for, with a shrug
The core meaning is simple: something has gone wrong and there's no fixing it. Wiktionary lists the slang sense as in trouble or in a hopeless situation, and notes a ruder synonym you can probably guess. It also records a softer slang sense: done in, exhausted, pooped.
- 'Exam's in an hour and I haven't revised. I'm cooked.' Hopeless, self-mocking.
- 'They scored again in the 90th minute, we're cooked.' A lost cause.
- 'Three meetings back to back, I'm cooked.' Exhausted, not doomed.
Those are made-up examples, but Merriam-Webster quotes real ones. A Reddit post from September 2024 asked 'How cooked am I? Is my life over? Is it too late to change?' The tone is the key. Cooked often sounds dramatic on purpose, so it can be a joke and a real worry at the same time.
'Chat, are we cooked?'
The phrase most people search for is 'are we cooked?', usually addressed to 'chat', the people watching a stream or reading the comments. Merriam-Webster says the modern use seems to be a continuation of the old meaning, differing more in the way it's used ('chat, are we cooked?') than in what it means.
It shows up in serious news too. Merriam-Webster quotes a May 2025 Hindustan Times report on Target workers worried about their jobs, one of whom wrote 'We are cooked' on Reddit. It also quotes USA Today in June 2025 on a caption reading 'We're so cooked' over a jumble of upbeat clips and footage of missiles, the kind of absurd mash-up the paper said may make zero sense to an older person.
Cooked in the 1840s
This is the surprising part. Merriam-Webster gives two Victorian examples. The Era, a London paper, printed 'I thought I was cooked once though' in February 1848. The Ipswich Journal used 'otherwise we were cooked' in January 1851. So someone saying they're cooked today is using slang older than the telephone.
The word kept popping up. Wiktionary quotes Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms from 1929: 'He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it.' It also quotes a December 2016 Politico piece saying everybody could see a candidate was cooked in Iowa. Wiktionary lists the old idiom 'someone's goose is cooked' among related terms, which carries the same sense of being finished.
Other meanings of cooked
Cooked does a lot of jobs, and context matters. Wiktionary lists these:
| Sense | Meaning | Where you'll hear it |
|---|---|---|
| Food | Prepared by cooking | Everywhere |
| Done for | In trouble, hopeless | Social media, sport, gaming |
| Tired | Exhausted, done in | Everyday talk |
| Drunk or high | Intoxicated, or hungover | Especially Australia |
| Crazy | Of a person: unhinged | Australia, derogatory |
| Fiddled | Accounts or figures falsified | Finance, as in 'cook the books' |
| Corrupted | An MP3 file broken by a text transfer | Old computing slang |
The accounts sense goes back a long way too. Wiktionary quotes The Accountant reporting a House of Lords debate from December 1925, where a speaker said figures had to be 'cooked', if he might use such an expression. And the MP3 sense is a lovely bit of tech history: Wiktionary quotes a 2000 guide explaining that a 'cooked' file had been sent over the web as text rather than binary, and needed 'uncooking' before it would play cleanly.
Cooked vs 'let him cook'
These two sound related but mean nearly opposite things. 'Let him cook' means let someone carry on, because they might be onto something good. 'He's cooked' means he's finished. One is hopeful, the other is doom.
Cooked also sits close to other dramatic slang. Crashing out is losing your temper in a way that makes things worse, which is often how people end up cooked. And FAFO is the warning that comes before it: mess around and find out.
Cooked is about the end of the road, while the slang around it mostly describes how you got there. That's why it so often turns up as the punchline at the end of a story, after everything that went wrong has been listed.
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Messages and comments are full of shorthand, and the tea meaning page decodes one of the common ones.
Is cooked rude?
Not in its main sense. It's informal and dramatic, but there's no swear word inside it. Merriam-Webster's advice is practical: cooked has long been slang and informal, and shows no signs of becoming otherwise, so you may wish to avoid it in formal writing. The Australian sense meaning crazy is the one to watch, because Wiktionary labels it derogatory. Calling a person cooked in that way is an insult.
Slang moves quickly, and the mewing meaning page helps you keep up.
Can a brand say 'we're cooked'?
It can be funny in the right place. A cafe posting 'the coffee machine broke at 7am, we're cooked' is human and relatable. A bank or a healthcare provider using it about anything serious would worry people. The rule I'd use is that cooked works for small, self-mocking disasters, never for real problems your customers are facing. And if the opposite is true, and your team has nailed something, goated is the word your followers will use instead.
Related: cooking: guidelines and how to pitch.
Frequently asked questions
What does cooked mean in slang?
It means done for, in serious trouble or past saving, as in 'we're cooked'.
What does 'are we cooked' mean?
It's a dramatic way of asking 'are we doomed?', often addressed to 'chat' on a stream.
How old is cooked as slang?
Merriam-Webster says it has meant 'done for, finished' since the middle of the 19th century, with examples from 1848 and 1851.
Is cooked the same as 'let him cook'?
No. 'Let him cook' means let someone carry on because they might succeed, while cooked means finished.
What does cooked mean in Australia?
Wiktionary says it can also mean drunk, high or hungover, and, as an insult, crazy.
Is it OK to say cooked at work?
In casual chats, usually. Merriam-Webster suggests avoiding it in formal writing.
