cook your goose

cook (one's) goose

To interfere with, disrupt, or ruin something for someone. News of my involvement in this scandal will cook my goose for sure.
See also: cook, goose
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

cook your goose

INFORMAL
If you cook your goose, you do something which causes trouble for you or spoils your chances of success. He's not going to get that promotion now — he's cooked his goose. Note: Something or someone can also cook someone else's goose. If any issue has cooked their goose at the next election, it is probably their position on taxes. Note: You can also say that your goose is cooked if you are in trouble or will certainly fail at something. We all thought our goose was cooked — we were going to be attacked by ground forces and there was nowhere to retreat. Note: There is a story that King Eric XIV of Sweden once arrived at a town to find that the people had hung a goose from a tree. This was intended as an insult, perhaps because geese were associated with stupidity. The King announced that he would `cook their goose', and his soldiers invaded the town and set fire to its main buildings. An alternative theory is that the expression refers to Aesop's fable of the goose which laid golden eggs: see the explanation at `kill the goose that lays the golden egg'.
See also: cook, goose
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
See also:
  • cook (one's) goose
  • cook goose
  • cook somebody's goose
  • cook someone's goose
  • cook someone's goose, to
  • cook up
  • cooked up
  • cook
  • cook out
  • cook off
References in periodicals archive
But perhaps the most ingenious was the claim that, after the Napoleonic Wars, redundant soldiers who had served in France joined local constabularies and adopted the name "escoffier" - someone able and ready to "cook your goose" - taken from the name of Auguste Escoffier, the famous French chef and restaurateur.
Fine words and false theories; MY CITY
River Cottage is all about rustic charm and there's plenty of that as Hugh and his team demonstrate how to cook your goose, what to do with brawn, speciality Christmas breads and some handmade treats for tasty hampers, including potted Stilton and pear cheese.
We love telly; PICK OF THE DAY
Could anything more graphically highlight the cavernous gulf between the affluent and the poor than the images of starving Africans which periodically fill our newspapers alongside the incessant chatter about the best way to cook your goose or the stodgy delights of Polenta?
Gluttony deserves its place as a deadly sin