concoct
/kənˈkɒkt
/- Now the couple are employing a chef to concoct pre-packaged meals and light lunches using home-grown ingredients.
- Both of them were wrong, and to prove it the APO had concocted a meal with a Brahms symphony as the first course and some gourmet Wagner items in the second.
- Not that this is a hastily concocted dish; the Agen prunes topping it have been soaked in brandy for well over a year.
Synonyms
- They fool the simple folk by concocting exciting stories about their receiving messages from the Jinn.
- Allowing detainees to talk may give them a chance to create and coordinate alibis and to corroborate or concoct stories to frustrate questioning attempts.
- Mr Wheeler spent two months behind bars before detectives discovered she had concocted the story.
Synonyms
Derivatives
concocter
- Why create the mischief and then pretend that he was not the concocter of the trouble?
- This has not escaped the attention of detergent concocters, who want an organic stain-removing enzyme, as well as biochemical supply houses.
- Bickerstaffe was basically a concocter of ‘books’ for musical pieces, and, as with modem scripts for musicals and television shows, literary authorship was hardly an issue.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Latin concoct-, literally 'cooked together', from concoquere. The original sense was 'refine metals or minerals by heating', later 'cook'.
cook from Old English:
The Old English coc, the early form of cook, was always male. The word was applied either to the domestic officer in charge of the preparation of food in a large household or to a tradesman who prepared and sold food. Women who prepared dinner started being called cooks in the mid 16th century. The root of the word is Latin coquus, also the source of concoct (mid 16th century) and biscuit. Cook has been used to mean ‘to tamper with’ since the 1630s, giving us cook the books, meaning ‘to alter records or accounts dishonestly’. The proverb too many cooks spoil the broth also dates back to the 16th century. It is not certain where the phrase cook someone's goose comes from. The reference could be to a goose being reared and fattened up for a forthcoming special occasion. Anyone who killed and cooked the goose before the proper time would have ruined the plans for the feast.