[Ads-l] Earliest Use of "Cook the Books"

[Dave Hause]

In the lab field, we call that "sink testing."
Dave Hause

-----Original Message----- 
From: Wilson Gray 
Sent: Sunday, February 3, 2019 9:46 PM 
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
Subject: Re: Earliest Use of "Cook the Books" 

Useless info, I know, but, in 1963, I was accused - rightly, i blush to
admit - of "cooking the books," in 1963, by a colleague. Having never heard
the expression, before, I asked him what he meant. He explained that he
meant that I was entering false data into the record of tests supposedly
carried out by me in the work of testing the so-called "routine waters,
fuel oils, and lubrication oils" used in the Sunday operation of the
now-defunct Harbor Steam(-Electric Generating) Plant of the Los Angeles
Department of Water & Power.
Since we're still friends, I'll just email him and ask him how and when he
learned the term. Of course, that's still not a cite, but WTF? At the time,
I assumed that he had learned the term in the military, since he had just
returned to work after getting out of the Army.

-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org