crank

1. (now chiefly dialectal) An ailment, ache.dialectal

2. (informal) An ill-tempered or nasty person.Examples: "Billy-Bob is a nasty old crank! He chased my cat away."informal

3. (informal, British, dated in US) A person who is considered strange or odd by others, and may behave in unconventional ways.Examples: "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."Synonyms: kook, odd duck, weirdo, crackpot, bizarro, coot, crackpot, crankBritishdatedinformal

4. (informal) An amateur in science or other technical subjects who persistently advocates flawed theories.Examples: "That crank next door thinks he’s created cold fusion in his garage."informal

5. (archaic, baseball, slang, 1800s) A baseball fan.archaicslang

6. (obsolete) A sick person; an invalid.Examples: "Thou art a counterfeit crank, a cheater."obsolete

1. (archaic) Any bend, turn, or winding, as of a passage.Examples: "So many turning cranks these have, so many crooks."archaic

2. (US, slang) Synonym of methamphetamine.Examples: "Danny got abscesses from shooting all that bathtub crank."Synonyms: methamphetamineUSslang

3. (rare) A twist or turn in speech; word play consisting in a change of the form or meaning of a word.Examples: "Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,"rare

4. (slang) The penis.Examples: "It was going to be hard not to blow with a girl like her sucking on his crank."Synonyms: cock, dick, anaconda, baloney pony, bald-headed hermit, banana, birdie, bobbyslang

1. (transitive) To turn by means of a crank.Examples: "Motorists had to crank their engine by hand."transitive

2. (intransitive) To turn a crank.Examples: "He's been cranking all day and yet it refuses to crank."intransitive

3. (intransitive, of a crank or similar) To turn.Examples: "He's been cranking all day and yet it refuses to crank."intransitive

4. (transitive) To cause to spin via other means, as though turned by a crank.Examples: "I turn the key and crank the engine; yet it doesn't turn over"; "Crank it up!"transitive

5. (intransitive) To act in a cranky manner; to behave unreasonably and irritably, especially through complaining.Examples: "Quit cranking about your spilt milk!"intransitive

6. (intransitive) To be running at a high level of output or effort.Examples: "By one hour into the shift, the boys were really cranking."; "Better computers use variable speed fans so they run at top speed only when the computer is really cranking"; "When we were playing at the top of our ability and really cranking, the whole thing could sound like a jet plane taking off in the club."intransitive