cook

About This Root

From Old French cuire, from Latin coquere (to cook, ripen, digest). Beyond the everyday cooking sense (cook, cooker, cooking), it hides in surprising words — biscuit (bis + coctus, 'twice cooked') and precocious (prae + coquere, 'pre-cooked', meaning ripened/matured early). The 'ripening by heat' metaphor extends to intellectual precociousness.

Associated Words