Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use crank in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Crank means hard; difficult. Example: “Billy-Bob is a nasty old crank! He chased my cat away.”

Examples of crank by meaning

nounAn ill-tempered or nasty person.

  • Billy-Bob is a nasty old crank! He chased my cat away.

nounA person who is considered strange or odd by others, and may behave in unconventional ways.

  • John is a crank because he talks to himself.
  • The raw meat cranks are in dead earnest.1901 July 19, “Gleanings”, in The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record, volume 4, number 10, page 318
  • The old crank wanted to actually make people.c. 1921 (date written), Karel Čapek, translated by Paul Selver, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama […], Garden City...

nounAn amateur in science or other technical subjects who persistently advocates flawed theories.

  • That crank next door thinks he’s created cold fusion in his garage.

nounA bent piece of an axle or shaft, or an attached arm perpendicular, or nearly so, to the end of a shaft or wheel, used...

  • I grind my coffee by hand with a coffee grinder with a crank handle.

nounThe act of converting power into motion, by turning a crankshaft.

  • Yes, a crank was all it needed to start.
  • Give it a forceful crank.
  • By comparison, consider the conductor of a double-decked Blackpool tram on August Monday, who hurries up and down stairs to a hundred or more passengers and serves each one by a simple crank of a handle.1964 November, E. N. Bellass, “Some questions for Mr. Mugliston”, in Modern Railways, page 330

nounSynonym of methamphetamine.

  • Danny got abscesses from shooting all that bathtub crank.

nounThe penis.

  • It was going to be hard not to blow with a girl like her sucking on his crank.2013, Reggie Chesterfield, Scoundrel, page 57

verbTo turn by means of a crank.

  • Motorists had to crank their engine by hand.

More sentences with crank

  • I used up all my mats cranking 90s and ended up getting one-pumped.From the entry mat
  • You can crank the engine until the cows come home, but it won’t start without fuel.From the entry until the cows come home
  • You'll have to rework the crank assembly to incorporate the changes.From the entry rework
  • I blew out an LED when I cranked up the power.From the entry blow out
  • Let's crank up the old motorcycle and take it for a spin.From the entry crank up
  • Crank up the Coltrane and start cooking!From the entry cook
  • The teenager spent hours cranking out volumes of bad poetry.From the entry crank out
  • An LED blew out when I cranked up the power.From the entry blow out
  • Although an operator presses the button, the actuation is done by an immense series of levers and cranks.From the entry actuation
  • He cranked up the volume to 11.From the entry crank up
  • The crank moves in a circle.From the entry circle
  • I couldn't believe it when I saw the equipment that they were still using. Those machines were all dinosaurs, but they were busily cranking out production.From the entry dinosaur
  • It’s one of those survivalist dealies that needs to be cranked instead of having batteries.2020, N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became, Orbit, page 419. From the entry dealy
  • If I was cranked up on caffeine, it was harder to relax and get aroused.2014, Jessica Sims, Wanted: Wild Thing. From the entry cranked up
  • So prop your bike against it, and stand on the down-pointing pedal crank.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 55. From the entry gridiron
  • When we cranked up the engine, the fire warning light lit up.2009, President Nixon's Pilot, Jim Bell, in The Propinquity Effect →ISBN. From the entry light up
  • If the number of humans is infinite, you've got Shakespeare, politely cranking out his magnum opi.2006 December 7, "Agent Smith", “Re: Hidden Code in The Bells”, in rec.org.mensa (Usenet), retrieved 21 Mar 2008. From the entry magnum opi
  • He was too amped to sleep, so he turned on the radio and cranked the volume.2004, Steve Parish, Joe Layden, Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road with the Grateful Dead. From the entry amped
  • Just don't try yanking my crank and telling me they're great, because I know better.2004 July 25, Randall Ainsworth, “Sigma SD 10 Newbie Help”, in rec.photo.misc (Usenet), retrieved 24 Mar 2025. From the entry yank someone's crank
  • When hydrostatic lock is suspected or exists, stop cranking immediately and notify unit maintenance.1992, US Department of the Army, Operator's Manual: Armored Reconnaissance/airborne Assault Vehicle, Full-Tracked 152-mm Gun/Launcher. From the entry hydrostatic lock
  • Cranks like Rousseau made solitude glamorous, but sensible people agreed that it was really terrible.1975, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →ISBN, page 193. From the entry solitude
  • On the Ashtabula type one-piece crankset, the two cranks and spindle are one unit.1972, Richard Ballantine, Richard's Bicycle Book, New York: Ballantine Books, page 186. From the entry Ashtabula
  • Turn the engine so that one of the cranks is about ten degrees beyond the top deadcenter.1911, Oil Field Engineering: (1911) - Volume 13, page 519. From the entry deadcenter
  • You may have heard an old crank in a big house ranting about appliances and unflushable toilets the other day.2020 January 3, Timothy Egan, “The Case for a One-Term Joe”, in The New York Times. From the entry unflushable
  • Users like to take the MDMA about four hours after the LSD, riding the acid’s peak before cranking up the elation.2019 February 8, James Nolan, “‘Kitty Flipping’ and the Psychonaut Obsession with Mixing Drugs”, in Vice, archived from the original on 21…. From the entry candy flip
  • They are easy to program to do multiple tasks and allow the company to crank out parts around the clock.2018 November 7, Janet Morrissey, “When Robots Ring the Bell”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry cobot
  • I still felt cranked up, but Nat's chalance had been surgically removed years ago and he was perfectly at ease.2017, Michael Darling, Got Hope. From the entry chalance
  • Birdy especially got cranked up about home burial.2013, Seedy Buckberry, A Windfall Homestead. From the entry cranked up

Meaning of crank

  1. adjective Hard; difficult.
  2. adjective Strange; weird; odd.
  3. adjective Bent; twisted; crooked; distorted; out of repair.

Full definition of crank

Questions about crank in a sentence

How do you use crank in a sentence?
Crank is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “Billy-Bob is a nasty old crank! He chased my cat away.”
What is a short sentence with crank?
“Give it a forceful crank.”
What does crank mean?
Crank means hard; difficult.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crank (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use crank in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/crank. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.