Word.ws English Dictionary

cranking the handle

cranking the handle is the present participle and gerund of crank the handle.

Meaning of crank the handle

Verb

crank the handle (third-person singular simple present cranks the handle, present participle cranking the handle, simple past and past participle cranked the handle)

  1. (idiomatic) To perform a process; to do some work.
    • There are various ways you can do this, including creating capacity by building a strong team, or by setting the sales stream up in such a way that anyone can crank the handle and keep the products going out and the customer demand coming in.2006, Rebecca Jordan, Kirsty Weir, In Good Company: The essential business start-up guide for women, A & C Black, page 229

Questions about cranking the handle

What is cranking the handle the present participle and gerund of?
Cranking the handle is the present participle and gerund of crank the handle.

Words near cranking the handle in the dictionary

  1. cranking it
  2. cranking off
  3. cranking one out
  4. cranking one's hog
  5. cranking out
  6. cranking the handle
  7. cranking the hog
  8. cranking up
  9. crankings
  10. crankish
  11. crankism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cranking the handle (page history and authors); crank the handle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cranking the handle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cranking_the_handle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.