crank up

present singular third person cranks up · participle present cranking up · participle past cranked up · past cranked up

1. 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.

2. idiomaticreflexiveTo 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

3. idiomaticslangTo prepare (something).
4. idiomaticTo increase, as the volume, power or energy of something.

   He cranked up the volume to 11.

   1 more example

   And it was not until Ryan Shawcross's towering header was cleared off the line by Danny Murphy on the stroke of half-time that Stoke started to crank up the pressure and suggest they were capable of getting back into the match.

   2010 December 28, Marc Vesty, “Stoke 0 - 2 Fulham”, in BBC

5. To describe in praiseworthy terms; to promote.

   Was the great machine ever what it was cranked up to be?

   2003, Chris Jenks, Transgression

   2 more examples

   Let's hope your ol' buddy Majors is all he's cranked up to be, for we're about to introduce him to what you yanks refer to as hard ball.

   2004, Michael Pinchot, Panamanian Tundra, page 66

   That whole campaign was a damp squib, they cranked it up as a real possibility that Scotland might win, and when we actually got there it didn't happen like that, and everybody came home quite early with their tails between their legs.

   2013, Alistair Moffat, Susan Mansfield, Alexander Smith, The Great Tapestry of Scotland: The Making of a Masterpiece

6. intransitiveslangTo inject heroin.