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ニュースの英語を解説する" In the News"シリーズ
第25回の本日は"Cook Up"です。
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In the News #25 - Cook Up
On Oct. 5, 2010, in the Daily Yomiuri, we had the following headline:
Maeda's boss 'cooked up' cover-up
When we see the word “cook”, we automatically think of “to prepare food”. So we can easily assume that the above headline could be rewritten as “Maeda’s boss prepared cover-up”.
The wiktionary.org entry for “to cook the books” says that this phrase originated at least in the 1600’s in England, as a metaphor for falsifying accounting records. In America companies are only supposed to have one official set of accounting records for tracking sales and costs. However, some companies would “keep two sets of books”, that is one set of accounting records were “cooked up” to be shown to the federal government for tax reporting, and the other set contained the true information regarding costs and profits.
Because “cooking the books” is the verb form to mean “falsifying the accounting records”, when we decide how to make the false data, we “cook up” that data. From this usage, “cook up” has also taken on the meaning of “to develop a new idea”. Often, companies will create advertising that uses the lines “see what we’ve cooked up now” and “guess what we’ve cooked up for you”, meaning “please look at our new products”. Here, “what we’ve cooked up for you” takes on the nuances of “to create” and “to prepare food” both at the same time.
This gives us the phrases:
Cook the books
Cooking the books
To cook up a new idea
See what we’ve cooked up
In the above headline, “Maeda’s boss ‘cooked up’ cover-up”, “cooked up” has the negative meaning of “to fabricate”, “to plot” or “to do something to mislead others”. So, our initial assumption was correct. We could reword this headline to read “Maeda’s boss planned cover-up”. Next, we need to ask “why did the editors decide to use ‘cook up’?” The phrase “cook up” does not appear anywhere else in the article. We have to assume that “cook up” was selected to match the appearance of the phrase “cover-up”. That is, for “alliteration”, only. (Alliteration is defined as a series of the same sounds appearing at the beginning of several words or phrases.)
As you read the newspapers this week, try to find more examples of stories using “cooking up”.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T101004004150.htm
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cook_the_books
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