to crank the handle
- phrasal verb
- He cranked the handle for quite some time until Patricia began to mumble and stir in her sleep.
Examples
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Slowly, she cranked the handle on the side of the gramophone.
Fiction book (1993) -
Then he tilted the camera down, its lens pointed at the open water, and he cranked the handle forward so that before one scene ended, the next one would begin.
Fiction book (1996) -
When you have this in place, you simply crank the handle.
Blog text (24) -
OK, But you could equally well crank the handle backwards and work out the state of electron in the past.
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To start the old engine, you need to crank the handle several times.
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Every morning, I crank the handle on my coffee grinder to prepare fresh coffee.
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He taught his son how to crank the handle of the toy music box to play the melody.
Synonyms
To make a machine or device start working
To turn a handle to make a machine work
Turn a watch or toy spring so it starts to work
To start a machine by turning a handle
How Hard
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to turn a handle to operate or start a machine' is directly and compositionally derived from 'crank' (to rotate) plus 'the handle' (the part meant to be turned). This verb + noun construction is literal and common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Crank the handle comes from old machines where a crank is a bent arm and a handle is what you turn by hand to make the machine move. So it means 'to turn a handle to operate or start a machine'.