Meaning of Crank | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A bent piece of an axle or shaft, or an attached arm perpendicular, or nearly so, to the end of a shaft or wheel, used to impart a rotation to a wheel or other mechanical device; also used to change circular into reciprocating motion, or reciprocating into circular motion.
2. A surname.
   countable, uncountable
3. An ailment, ache.
   dialectal
4. Clipping of crankshaft.
   abbreviation, alt-of, clipping
5. A small village in Rainford parish, St Helens borough, Merseyside, England (OS grid ref SJ5099).
   countable, uncountable
6. An ill-tempered or nasty person.
   informal
7. The act of converting power into motion, by turning a crankshaft.
8. A twist or turn of the mind; caprice; whim;
9. Any bend, turn, or winding, as of a passage.
   archaic
10. A fit of temper or passion.
11. Synonym of methamphetamine.
    US, slang
12. A person who is considered strange or odd by others, and may behave in unconventional ways.
    British, dated, informal
13. An amateur in science or other technical subjects who persistently advocates flawed theories.
    informal
14. A twist or turn in speech; word play consisting in a change of the form or meaning of a word.
    rare
15. A baseball fan.
    archaic, slang
16. The penis.
    slang
17. A sick person; an invalid.
    obsolete

Equivalents

Examples

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

“Violent of temper; subject to sudden cranks.”

“John is a crank because he talks to himself.”

“Persons whom the Americans since Guiteau’s trial have begun to designate as ‘cranks’—that is to say, persons of disordered mind, in whom the itch of notoriety supplies the lack of any higher ambition.”

“The raw meat cranks are in dead earnest. They think that raw food is the manna of heaven.”

“But do you know what isn't in the school books? That old Rossum was mad. Seriously, Miss Glory, you must keep this to yourself. The old crank wanted to actually make people.”

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

“Thou art a counterfeit crank, a cheater.”

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

“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.”

“So many turning cranks these have, so many crooks.”

“Danny got abscesses from shooting all that bathtub crank.”

“Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,”

“It was going to be hard not to blow with a girl like her sucking on his crank.”

CEFR level