Word.ws English Dictionary

cranks up

cranks up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of crank up.

Meaning of crank up

Verb

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

  1. 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.
  2. (idiomatic, reflexive) To muster up the mental energy to do something.
    • 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.1976 August 14, John Mitzel, Richard Hall, “The Whodunit Writer: Why He Dun It”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 7, page 7
  3. (idiomatic, slang) To prepare (something).
  4. (idiomatic) To increase, as the volume, power or energy of something.
    • He cranked up the volume to 11.
  5. To describe in praiseworthy terms; to promote.
    • Was the great machine ever what it was cranked up to be?2003, Chris Jenks, Transgression
  6. (intransitive, slang) To inject heroin.

Questions about cranks up

What is cranks up the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Cranks up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of crank up.

Words near cranks up in the dictionary

  1. cranks one out
  2. cranks one's hog
  3. cranks out
  4. cranks the handle
  5. cranks the hog
  6. cranks up
  7. crankset
  8. cranksets
  9. crankshaft
  10. crankshafted
  11. crankshafting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cranks up (page history and authors); crank up (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: “cranks up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cranks_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.