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)
- 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.
- 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
- To prepare (something).
- To increase, as the volume, power or energy of something.
- He cranked up the volume to 11.
- To describe in praiseworthy terms; to promote.
- Was the great machine ever what it was cranked up to be?2003, Chris Jenks, Transgression
- 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
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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “cranks up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cranks_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
