crank.
Hard; difficult.
Meaning & usage
Hard; difficult.
Strange; weird; odd.
Bent; twisted; crooked; distorted; out of repair.
Sick; unwell.
Liable to capsize because of poorly stowed cargo or insufficient ballast.
Full of spirit; brisk; lively; sprightly; overconfident; opinionated.
Where this word comes from
From Dutch or Low German krank, ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *krank, from Proto-Germanic *krangaz, *krankaz (“bent; weak”). Cognate with Scots crank, krank, German krank (“sick”).
An ailment, ache.
An ill-tempered or nasty person.
Billy-Bob is a nasty old crank! He chased my cat away.
A twist or turn of the mind; caprice; whim;
A fit of temper or passion.
A person who is considered strange or odd by others, and may behave in unconventional ways.
John is a crank because he talks to himself.
An 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.
A baseball fan.
A sick person; an invalid.
Where this word comes from
From Dutch or Low German krank, ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *krank, from Proto-Germanic *krangaz, *krankaz (“bent; weak”). Cognate with Scots crank, krank, German krank (“sick”).
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.
I grind my coffee by hand with a coffee grinder with a crank handle.
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. Clipping of crankshaft.
The act of converting power into motion, by turning a crankshaft.
Yes, a crank was all it needed to start.
Give it a forceful crank.
Any bend, turn, or winding, as of a passage.
Synonym of methamphetamine.
Danny got abscesses from shooting all that bathtub crank.
A twist or turn in speech; word play consisting in a change of the form or meaning of a word.
The penis.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English crank, cronk, from a shortening of Old English crancstæf (“weaving tool, crank”, literally “bent or crooked staff”), the first element ultimately related to Etymology 1 above.
To turn by means of a crank.
Motorists had to crank their engine by hand.
To turn a crank.
He's been cranking all day and yet it refuses to crank.
To turn.
He's been cranking all day and yet it refuses to crank.
To cause to spin via other means, as though turned by a crank.
I turn the key and crank the engine; yet it doesn't turn over
Crank it up!
To act in a cranky manner; to behave unreasonably and irritably, especially through complaining.
Quit cranking about your spilt milk!
To be running at a high level of output or effort.
By one hour into the shift, the boys were really cranking.
To run with a winding course; to double; to crook; to wind and turn.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English crank, cronk, from a shortening of Old English crancstæf (“weaving tool, crank”, literally “bent or crooked staff”), the first element ultimately related to Etymology 1 above.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.