cooks

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of cook.

   The chef cooks each dish to order in front of the guests.

   Steam rises from the pot whenever she cooks rice for the table.

   Note

   One spelling carries every use of the verb, with or without an object. A chef cooks dinner, a sauce cooks slowly, and a commuter cooks in a stuffed train car. In slang, a power surge cooks a circuit board. Nothing in the form tells these uses apart. The object, or the lack of one, together with the surrounding sentence, shows which meaning is intended.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of cook.

   The restaurant employs three cooks during the dinner rush.

   The army's cooks rose before dawn to feed the marching column.

   Note

   The plural reaches across every countable sense of the noun: kitchen staff, the head cooks of manor houses, and, in slang, both the people who make meth and their sessions of making it. The spelling is shared with the present-tense verb, so "the cooks cook" is perfectly grammatical. A determiner such as the, three or our marks the noun, and the verb follows it.

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