Dictionary

cook the books en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

From the mid-17th century. A metaphor based on cooking, whereby ingredients are changed, altered and improved. Thus financial statements can also be so modified to the benefit of the "cook".

Meanings

1. (idiomatic) To manipulate accounting information, especially illegally.
   • Enron Corp., once a major U.S. corporation, is now famous for cooking the books.
2. (broadly, idiomatic) To falsify an account of an event.
   • Those that cooked the books and presented them with bias minds; They sugar-coated the stories; and twisted and exaggerated events 2012, R.I. Iyemere, The Ordeals: Poems in Memory of Ada-Emilia Valmori, →ISBN, page 146:
   • One does suspect that the authors of Numbers cooked the books a bit to make the more important and respected tribes (Judah, for instance) look good with higher population numbers. 2017, Stephen Warde Anderson, The Anderson Revisionist Bible: The Books of Moses, →ISBN, page 280:
   • Two years after he received his piece of the Nobel Prize, Mann was drawn into controversy over a series of e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom that some climate change skeptics charged provided proof that Mann and his fellow scientists were cooking the books on climate, though for what reason, the skeptics never made clear. 2015, Seamus McGraw, Betting the Farm on a Drought, →ISBN:

Forms

Relateds

double bookkeeping · white-collar crime · Hollywood accounting · off the books · goose is cooked · Hollywood bookkeeping · creative accounting

Translations (18)

ja 改竄する (manipulate accounting information) · pt fraudar a contabilidade (manipulate accounting information) · pt manipular a contabilidade (manipulate accounting information) · fi harjoittaa luovaa kirjanpitoa (manipulate accounting information) · nb forfalske regnskapet (manipulate accounting information) · pt adulterar (falsify an account of an event) · fi vääristellä (falsify an account of an event) · ru фальсифици́ровать фина́нсовую отчётность (manipulate accounting information) · fi kaunistella (falsify an account of an event) · kw fugya an akontys (manipulate accounting information) · ru сфальсифици́ровать фина́нсовую отчётность (manipulate accounting information) · nrf tricachonner des comptes (manipulate accounting information) · cmn 做假帳 /做假帐 (manipulate accounting information) · fi väärentää (falsify an account of an event) · el μαγειρεύω τα βιβλία (manipulate accounting information) · pt manipular (falsify an account of an event) · cmn 弄虛作假 /弄虚作假 (falsify an account of an event) · pt falsificar (falsify an account of an event)