Name: English Tutor Nick P Idioms (188) Cook the Books
Uploaded: 2019-05-14T14:53:54.000Z
Duration: 1 min 57 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Idioms 188. The idiom today is to cook

Present continuous

the books. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone is cooking the

books,  he or she is falsifying financial records. All right.  So if they falsify them,  they

put down fake numbers or they fudge the numbers. As like what we might say. So

they're falsifying the records. They're cooking the books. Let's continue. The

origin of this phrase comes from the idea that 'cook' at one time,  you know used

to be in the past at one time used to mean to transform something. Which makes

more sense. Like you're transforming the numbers to make them look like something

they are really not. So that's where it came from to cook the books other than that

you know people used to wonder. Well , why do they say cook the books ? I mean are

they,  they're not actually putting it into boiling water. Why,  why cook the

books ? Okay. Anyway,  let's continue here.  Let's look at the first example. That

company cooked its books. So they could have a positive financial quarterly

report in order to help the stock price to rise. Yes.  Some,  sometimes they might do

this. You know,  they're not supposed to do it. Maybe they can get away with doing it.

Maybe not. Maybe they may get caught.  But sometimes we say they might cook the

books or maybe they have two sets of books. The real books and the fake books.

Okay.  Anyway,  let's look at number two.  Don't believe these GDP numbers. The

government is cooking the books. Yes sometimes you hear somebody say that. If

they're really questionable about the government's numbers,  especially when a

lot of numbers don't seem to match or make sense. They say well , they must just

be cooking the books. Okay. Anyway,  I hope you got it.  I hope it's clear. Thank you