crank up

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crank up (third-person singular simple present cranks up, present participle cranking up, simple past and past participle 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. (idiomatic) To increase, as the volume, power or energy of something.

   He cranked up the volume to 11.

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

     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.

3. To describe in praiseworthy terms; to promote.
   • 2003, Chris Jenks, Transgression:

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

   • 2004, Michael Pinchot, Panamanian Tundra, page 66:

     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.

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

     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.