Where "Cooked" Comes From
Being "cooked" in the sense of exhausted, ruined or in trouble is old English slang: Green's Dictionary of Slang records it from 1848, with Australian citations from 1903. It has surged again in recent Australian youth and internet slang, where it can mean physically exhausted ("I'm cooked") or hopelessly stuck ("that exam was cooked"). The exact path of the revival isn't documented.
Sources: cooked, adj. (Green's Dictionary of Slang) · Cooked: Exhaustion and Bad Situations (World Wide Words)
“We've got three assignments due tomorrow and I haven't started, so we're cooked.”
“After hauling boxes all day, I'm properly cooked.”
"After that double shift I'm absolutely cooked."
How Aussies Actually Use It
Widely heard in casual Australian speech again lately, especially among younger speakers.
The meaning depends on what's going on around it, and that is the part learners find tricky. After a hard shift or a long run, 'I'm cooked' means you're exhausted. Facing a deadline you can't meet or a mistake you can't undo, it means you're in trouble or out of options. Younger speakers also say it about others: 'he's cooked' can mean he's about to be found out or has no chance.
It is casual, playful and not offensive. It sits alongside 'buggered', 'knackered' and 'stuffed' for tiredness, but it also covers the doomed-situation sense that those words don't always carry. Tone is often dry and a little dramatic, so it's usually said with a shrug or a laugh. A learner tip: if someone says a cooked meal is 'cooked', they mean it literally. It's the first-person 'I'm cooked' or 'we're cooked' that signals the slang meaning.
See also: Knackered (exhaustion sense), Buggered (older Aussie word for worn out or broken), Stuffed (another way to say exhausted or ruined).
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