spin up

present singular third person spins up · participle present spinning up · participle past spun up · past spun up

1. intransitivecomputingTo reach a sufficient spinning speed for reads and writes to take place.

   The hard drive spun up. The gray screen flickered. The smiley Mac face appeared and soon I was ready to dazzle the world with The Journals Book II.

   2005, R. T. Stone, The Journals Book II: Into the Gulf, page 28

   1 more example

   Plated hard disk surfaces are actually harder and more scratch resistant than read-write heads are. The hard magnetic medium effectively protects itself from head crashes caused by contaminants and the drive's spinning up or down.

   1987, PC: The Independent Guide to IBM Personal Computers, volume 6, page 222

2. transitivecomputingTo power up, launch, or instantiate.

   Near-synonyms: spool up; gin up

   1 more example

   We spun up a virtual server in the cloud to handle the additional load.

   Synonyms: spool up, gin up

3. figurativelyintransitiveTo be brought into full operation; to reach full potential or capacity; to spool up.

   1 more example

   The auditorium opens and the seats fill. As ever, there's a brief, grey dead time while Wheeler waits for all the machinery of the performance to spin up. The anxious feeling is stronger than usual today. It grips him, an uncharacteristic urge to run away. Sure, he thinks. I could just junk my career, right now. Pack it in and make for the stage door. Maybe the taxi'll still be there.

   2019 April 10, qntm, “CASE HATE RED”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 136

4. figurativelytransitiveTo fabricate.

   1 more example

   For the better part of a decade, Donald J. Trump and his allies at Fox News have beguiled some Americans and enraged others as they spun up an alternative world where elections turned on fraud, one political party oppressed another, and one man stood against his detractors to carry his version of truth to an adoring electorate.

   2023 April 1, Jonathan Weisman, “Trump and Fox News, Twin Titans of Politics, Hit With Back-to-Back Rebukes”, in The New York Times, →ISSN