Question 1

What does “cooked” mean?

Accepted Answer

Finished, ruined, or without a way out — used of a person or a situation that has hit a point of no return. It marks defeat, exposure, exhaustion, or embarrassment that cannot be undone: getting caught in a lie, blowing an opportunity, running out of options in a game, or simply being too worn down to go on. It sits as the negative twin of "cooking," which in the same vernacular means someone is doing exceptionally well — so whether "cooked" lands as an insult or a shared joke depends entirely on tone and relationship between speaker and listener.

Question 2

Where does “cooked” come from?

Accepted Answer

Rooted in African American Vernacular English, where the food metaphor of something being "done" was extended to people and situations that had reached their end — paired against "cooking," the AAVE term for succeeding or making moves (as in working the kitchen). Mainstream tech and slang sites now file "cooked" under "Gen Z slang" or trace it only to gaming and TikTok, but that account skips the earlier Black usage the flipped pair (cooking/cooked) came out of before gamers and platforms picked it up.