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'.