crank up
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Pronunciation
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Verb
crank up (third-person singular simple present cranks up, present participle cranking up, simple past and past participle cranked up)
- To start something mechanical, an act that often used to involve cranking.
- Let's crank up the old motorcycle and take it for a spin.
- (idiomatic, reflexive) To muster up the mental energy to do something.
- 1976 August 14, John Mitzel, Richard Hall, “The Whodunit Writer: Why He Dun It”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 7, page 7:
- I kept thinking: this has nothing to do with my interests, with what I believe is a desirable subject for literature. I was doing it as a performance. I kept cranking myself up to perform, to meet the demands of the genre. I know this sounds terribly inartistic.
- (idiomatic, slang) To prepare (something).
- (idiomatic) To increase, as the volume, power or energy of something.
- He cranked up the volume to 11.
- To describe in praiseworthy terms; to promote.
- 2003, Chris Jenks, Transgression:
- Was the great machine ever what it was cranked up to be?
- 2004, Michael Pinchot, Panamanian Tundra, page 66:
- Let's hope your ol' buddy Majors is all he's cranked up to be, for we're about to introduce him to what you yanks refer to as hard ball.
- 2013, Alistair Moffat, Susan Mansfield, Alexander Smith, The Great Tapestry of Scotland: The Making of a Masterpiece:
- That whole campaign was a damp squib, they cranked it up as a real possibility that Scotland might win, and when we actually got there it didn't happen like that, and everybody came home quite early with their tails between their legs.
- (slang, intransitive) To inject heroin.
Translations
to start something mechanical
to increase power or volume
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